Citadel
by Azula Always Lies
Summary: Several years into her stay at the asylum, Azula's come to think of it as her home. It's only when a girl in a blue dress shows up carrying a waterskin, claiming she's going to "heal" her, that life stops making sense.
1. Azula and the Riptide

All right, so. Here we go.

I'm well aware this isn't the only "postfinale Azula" fanfic; it's a story that's been told time and time again, by a hundred different authors in a hundred different ways. Some of those authors, I'm sure, are better than I am. Some of their stories are better than mine. I'm not trying to write the _best_ version of this story, or to tell anyone else theirs is wrong – in fact, soon enough we'll all have our little illusions shattered, when ALOK comes out and the comics come out and we find out what really happened, with any luck. So the most I can do – the most anyone can really do – is write _my_ version, in hopes that a few of you will like it enough to come along for the ride.

I purposely set this story an ambiguous number of years after the ATLA finale, so you can picture these characters however old you'd like them to be. Azula's been in the asylum for awhile, at least a couple of years, but whether that's two years or ten years is up to you; I don't plan to include any specific references to age or the passage of time. No one's married or popping out babies, though, so it's not as if they're supposed to be middle-aged.

When Katara references Zuko coming to see Azula, she's referencing a oneshot I wrote last fall, and which is of course listed among the others on my profile. _Circles_ is kinda-sorta the basis for this story, and Azula was indeed very loquacious in it, much more so than she'll be this time around. It's not at all necessary to read it, to understand this story, but it's fairly short and a glance couldn't hurt, if you're interested.

Oh, and one last thing: the title of this story comes from an Anna Nalick song, also titled Citadel (on Youtube as /watch?v=IQ2g4cAzyIE). Hopefully, if you listen to it as the story gets going, you'll see – or rather, hear – the same connection I do.

**1. Azula and the Riptide**

I really despise injections.

And it seems I get them all the time now, for one reason or another. There's always someone wielding a needle, some nervous hushed shadow that flits about awhile – dances and darts around me, ever cautious, like I'm a viper – and descends. Always that little prick somewhere along my thigh, since they can't get at my arms, and the cotton and the sticky tape. And the stupor that sets in soon after, the fog rolling in over my eyelids, the thumb smearing my thoughts into a long greasy streak. I can't ever think much after the shots, can't ever do much, or feel much, so I know I get them when something's going to happen. When I'm about to be fed, usually, or given a bath. When someone has to touch me.

I know I get them because they're scared. Because they don't want to push a spoon into my mouth and end up with third-degree burns. I wish they'd understand that they don't need to be, because I'm not dangerous; I wish they'd listen when I tell them that was a dream, back then when I was a dragon. When I was a thing that spat fire and held the sun in my hands. But they don't listen to me, they never listen to me, so they go on believing. Go on thinking I'm a monster, who'd kill them as soon as let them near. Let them think it. I don't care.

But I hate the injections. I hate being sleepy all the time. My mind is all I have, here in this place, and I hate that they steal it from me—but then again, what's there to do? Nothing but tell them _stop_, and they won't. Nothing but make a game out of counting the minutes, between when the needle nips my skin, and when my head starts to go heavy. Last time it was thirty-two.

In any case, I couldn't have known she was coming, because I get shots all the time. I didn't know it was for her. I didn't know until my door opened, with a tinny _clink_ that just barely broke the trance; it was faint, like a mallet against chimes, but it made me look up. And when I did I saw her, standing there watching me, a different breed than the rest. A girl in a blue dress. I would've disliked her anyway, because blue is a bad color, but it was more than that—I didn't like her because she was familiar. Not in a good way. Familiar like I might drown just looking at her. Like she was a riptide, a ravening dark sea, and she had already dragged me down.

"Hey."

_Hey? _I'd never wanted to strike someone so much in my life. There I lay grappling for breath, and all she could say was _hey_? She looked at me a moment, as if waiting for a response – what in the world could I have said to _hey?_ – and then shrugged, heading across the cell towards me. "Fine, don't answer me," she said. "Maybe this'll be easier that way."

This. What was _this_? The girl made no sense. She knelt beside me and leaned down, as if to catch my eye; I deliberately avoided hers. "Can you sit up?"

_Well, it's not easy in a straitjacket, _I wanted to tell her. _Have you ever tried sitting up without your arms? It takes effort, and focus, and it helps if they don't give you a shot first. And a good reason never hurts. Why should I sit up for you, anyway? What have you done for me? I don't even know who you are._ But I said nothing out loud. Sometimes the shots do that, make it hard to speak; sometimes afterwards it's like my mouth is full of gauze, dry and filmy and numb to the words in my head. I was too drowsy to answer her, too dizzy to sit up, and besides that I wouldn't have done it if I could. I didn't want her to have the satisfaction.

She sighed. "I should've known we'd be doing this the hard way." And then, of all the outrageous things—she actually slid an arm around me, and lifted me herself! I could've killed her. I swear, I could've killed her right then. I could feel my brow cave in on itself, gouging a trench between my eyes. I glared at her, fiercely enough to bend steel, but in the end she had me braced against the wall – and to make matters worse, she cracked a grin. "Now there's a look I haven't seen in awhile," she said dryly, unhooking a pouch from her side. "Can't say I've missed it."

Evidently, the pouch was a waterskin. I watched her, scowling, as she uncorked it, and—she did _something_—I don't know what, but she just flicked her wrist, and the water inside slid out. Sort of floated, in a loose, shimmering bubble. I saw it engulf her hands, still moving, pulsing all the time. And it should have been calming, I guess, but there was something ominous about it – something about it that unsettled me, like she had coming in. My throat closed up again. Watching the water flash, I couldn't escape the sense that something bad was about to happen, and a chill crawled down my spine.

The girl didn't appear to notice. My eyes stayed on her hands, too wide to maintain a frown, but she seemed too busy talking to care. "I can't be sure this will work," she said. "I mean, I'm not sure how well healing works when it's…you know, healing the mind." _What? Whose mind? Is she talking about me? _"But I've tried it before, on—on my friend. When he was brainwashed in Ba Sing Se. And I know it's not the same, what happened to him and—um—whatever's wrong with you—but it's worth a shot, right? There must be something I can do."

_Whatever's _wron_g with me? _I hated her more all the time. And I couldn't make heads or tails of anything she said, or did – before I knew it her hands, sheathed in liquid gloves, had risen to my temples. She let them rest there, the water rippling softly in my ears. It was like silk, almost, warm but not slick, not wet like water ought to be. Strange. I kept my gaze away from hers, still searching for contact.

"I guess this'd be less awkward if I were behind you. That's how I'd usually do it, too." I could hear the smirk in her voice, irritatingly gentle even then. "But until you decide to sit up, this is how it's got to be."

She kept referencing _this_. But what, exactly, was _this_? I would've asked her if I hadn't despised her so. I didn't know what she meant by _healing_, or what the water had to do with it; I didn't know if it was meant to feel good, what she was doing, or if the pressure in my chest was there for a reason. If I was supposed to choke on each breath. The water was warm, but with each minute I got colder, as though ice floes were forming on my skin—I tried to blink it away, but soon my vision was swimming, as though I were inside a fishbowl.

"Not that I'm complaining," she started again, "but I have to say I'm surprised you won't talk to me. When Zuko came to see you, he said you wouldn't shut up." Her shoulders rose in a little shrug. "I don't know if I should be insulted or relieved. Or neither one. That _was_ a long time ago – maybe it's not personal, huh?"

By then, her voice was nothing but white noise, an echo thinned by the sound of surf. If this was healing, she was doing it wrong. I was frozen and breathless, adrift in invisible waves, and I'd never tell her as much but I was _scared_ – scared of this girl, this strange smiling girl, this blue-eyed riptide that could drown me in floating water. She spoke like she knew me, like she wanted to_ help_ me, but—my every last instinct said _enemy._

And then finally—_finally_—she let her hands drop. Too slow for my liking. With a twirl of her finger, the water sailed back into its skin, drop by drop until she replaced the cork. Then she looked at me again, for what felt like a long time – looked at me and really _saw_ me, maybe, for the first time since she'd come in. Maybe she saw how scared I was, much as I hate the thought. Maybe I was as pale as I felt. "Look," she said at last, the word low and short and somehow sharp, "I don't…exactly know why I'm here. I don't know—_why_ I want to help you, and there are a million reasons I shouldn't. Believe me, I've been through them all. You're not my friend, you're not my—_responsibility_, and honestly, in the end I thought I'd be glad to be rid of you. I thought I would enjoy it, seeing you like this. I don't know why I can't." She sighed and seemed to steel herself, face set with new resolve. "But there are two things I _do_ know. I know you weren't letting me in today. And I know if you would, I could help you."

The girl got to her feet, pouch at her side. And she left. And I watched her go, between the bars of my cell – watched her back, as it vanished into the hallway, and counted each step she took. Until they faded. Until I could breathe.


	2. Azula Speaks

Well, this is encouraging. =\ Oh, well. Inspiration marches on.

**2. Azula Speaks**

She came back. The next day, they gave me another injection, and thirty-two minutes later—she came back.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded, the second she closed the cell door. I was woozy from the shot, by then, and I still wasn't wild about giving her what she wanted, but if I remembered anything it was yesterday – and I was _not _going to let her near me again. "What do you want?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so now you're going to talk to me. What changed?"

"I asked you a question!"

I could hear myself bark like a mad dog, the words pushing free hard and ragged from my throat. I saw her blink in surprise. Unyielding, I slit my eyes and glared up at her, until she opened uneasy hands. "Um, I thought I told you yesterday," she said slowly, much less cheerful, palms cocked in a vague, puzzled show of innocence. "Don't you remember? I said—I wanted to help you."

I think I might've laughed then, though I can't be sure. As I recall, it came out more like a snarl. "_Help_? I don't know _what_ you did yesterday, but it was pretty far from _help_."

"What do you mean?"

"What I _mean_ is—I mean, I—" It was always so hard to find words, after the injections. My head was spinning already. I had to close my eyes for a moment, just to get my bearings, just to stop the world melting to mud; there's not much balance to be had, bound on a concrete floor, but what little there was I tried to grasp. Tried to retain my wits, until I said what I had to say. "I don't even know who you are," I said weakly, more so than I'd hoped. "I don't know what you want. You—you come in here and you talk about healing, you talk about helping, you talk like you know me and you're doing me this—this big _favor_, like I'm so dumb not to play along, like somehow it's all going to get better. But you—yesterday, you—you—" My voice stuck, breaking like brittle wood. I would've sickened myself, if I weren't so dizzy. "I don't know what you did. With that water. But it was awful."

She was staring at me. Not just looking anymore, staring, the whites of her eyes stark and wide. Her hands had been at her pouch, loosing it from her side again, but they dropped and she came closer – just a step, at first. Not close enough to make me flinch. "Of course you know who I am."

What could I say to that? She could stand there all day and tell me things I knew weren't true; she'd be just like the shadow-people, then. That was no shock. The only people who ever opened my door were people who wanted to lie to me, and they'd become background noise by now. Just the hum of a distant sun, hung above a hollow world.

"_Of course you know who I am_."

Another step and I hadn't the strength to grit my teeth, eyelids flagging like windless sails. "No," I answered. "I don't."

"Yes, you do. I know you do. Maybe you _think_ you don't, but…" I let my eyes close. She was talking in circles again. "But how should I know, anyway? Maybe this is one of your games. How am I supposed to believe you?"

_Games? What is she talking about, games? _The only games I played were counting games. I played bricks, and minutes, and bars. I played rafters and cobwebs. I played drops, when it rained outside, when the water ran in through the ceiling and _plinked_ softly to the ground, an inch from my nose. Yesterday I'd played steps, when she left. But I knew no other games, and her logic that wasn't logical was making me tired. "You," I said to her, with a clarity uncommon after my shots, "make no sense at all."

Her voice went up a notch. "Azula, you—"

"_Don't call me that!_"

I couldn't help it. I must have sounded savage, yowling at her like that—I _know_ I did, because she paled at the sound, and the dissonance of it scraped my throat raw. The hatred behind it blazed in my bones. Suddenly, I wasn't drowsy anymore, and I found the strength to sit up; suddenly I had risen, like a ghoul from its grave, so angry I could scarcely see. And I couldn't help it. I was no monster, like they said I was, but that was one lie I couldn't bear. I couldn't stand to hear her speak that name, so often on the tongues of my ghosts. They came out of the walls, when no one was around, gossamer puppets on spider's-thread strings – no one ever believed it, when I spoke of them, but still they returned and they spoke to me. Usually the girl and the woman, the pretty ones, with lipsticked smiles. They'd slink over the stone and whisper in my ears, strumming cell bars like harpstrings, half-singing of felled cities and gods. Take my face in vaporous hands and kiss me, stroke my hair. At night, I'd wake from my dreams always to see them, yellow eyes glowing in the dark. And always, they would call me by that name.

"Don't _ever_ call me that," I repeated, narrow gaze nailed to her face. Swathed in layers of canvas, my chest heaved in some violent semblance of rhythm, as though each breath couldn't come fast enough. "That's _not_ my name. Don't call me that. Don't call me that."

I said it again and again, like a mantra, like a spell. As if I could make her _understand_, even though that was stupid – even though no one understood, and no one listened, and if everyone else went on aping the ghosts, why shouldn't she? I said it over and over, but I waited. Watched her and waited. Knew that the second I stopped, she'd say it again.

"Okay." She stopped me in my tracks. I'd only said it twenty-six times – and I'd thought I ought to reach forty, just to be sure, that was a nice even number – but she cut in and she said _okay_, and again she showed me her palms. Her voice was softer this time, too. Not so guarded. "Okay. I'm sorry. I won't—I won't call you that." She used the lull to sit down beside me, almost touching-distance. Stunned as I was, I didn't pull away. "Can you tell me what you meant before? When you said—when you mentioned 'the thing with the water.' Why was it awful?"

It took me a minute to answer. A minute longer of watching her, trying to be sure—wondering if _she_ weren't the one playing a game, tossing curveballs to catch me off guard. No one had ever listened to me before. "Because it just was," I said slowly, warily, sliding a foot or two away just for good measure. "I don't know. It felt—like I was drowning."

She tipped her head to one side, brow knit in thought. "Drowning? How so?"

"I said I don't know! It just felt that way, okay?" I let out a clipped breath. "It was…sort of like a bad dream. A dream where I'm in a fishbowl, or—or a block of ice—and I'm trapped. I can't breathe. You did it. I don't know."

As an afterthought, I drew my legs up to my chest, curling into myself as best I could. I rested my chin on my knees, and closed my eyes; for a long time, she said nothing. "Oh." I didn't look up when she first spoke. "_Oh_." Not even when she spoke again, the same not-quite-a-word with a different weight. It was strange, though, how much I could hear in that _oh – _sudden awareness, at first, just skirting pleasure. A little bit of shock. And I might have been wrong—I'm almost _sure_ I was wrong, it was so faint—but I thought I heard, in the sigh that came after, a murmur of something like guilt. "Well, of course. I should've known."

"Should've known what?"

She shook her head. "Never mind. You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Then, she did something especially weird. Next to me, she pulled _her_ legs up into her, and folded her arms on top of them; I couldn't do that, in the jacket, but I would've if I could've and it was like she could tell. She laid her chin on her forearms, staring off into space. And I thought, in the silence, of how odd we must look – me and the girl in the blue dress, like two little eggs placed side-by-side. Just waiting to be cracked. "Listen," she said to me eventually, turning her head to catch my eye. "I _know_ I can help you. I can sort of tell, with this kind of thing, and just from yesterday I know I can help you. And I think I can help with the bad dream, too. Make it easier. But here's the thing – if I'm going to do all that, I _have_ to get near you. I have to—do the thing with the water again, and you have to let me. There's no other way."

"Then forget it."

"Come on. There must be_ something_ I can do – isn't there anything you want? Something I can get you, in exchange?"

"No." I sighed and found myself swallowing a yawn. I could ignore the shots, when I was angry, but my blood had cooled and I'd remembered to be sleepy; it was, with each passing minute, getting harder and harder to think straight. I really despise injections. "And I'm tired now," I added, shutting my eyes. "Leave me alone."

"Are you sure you don't—" She paused. "Wait. How can you be tired?" she said, head almost surely tilted, needling cynicism in the words. "It's only noon. There's _nothing _to do in here. What could possibly be making _you_ tired?"

I didn't think much in terms of my hands anymore, but curiously enough, I felt an unpleasant impulse to rub my eyes. "For your information," I enlightened her, only slightly snippy, "they give me shots that make me tired. I don't like it, but they think I'm going to make trouble, so I get shots all the time – especially when somebody like you shows up. It's not my fault."

"Oh." She brightened, for some reason. As if she'd had some wonderfully clever thought. "What if I could get them to stop giving you shots? Would you be willing to bargain for that?"

"Do whatever you want to do. I don't care."

I heard her get up and leave the room, lighter on her feet this time. With a self-assured flounce in her gait. When she'd gone I let out a yawn, and dropped back down to the floor, and let lids heavy as lead close on my eyes. Put her deal out of my mind. There was, after all, no need to entertain it; they'd never stop giving me shots.


	3. Azula Gives an Answer

Wow! Somebody's actually reading! o_o Wonder beyond wonders.

Forever Fyre: Cotton and sticky tape = ATLA version of a Band-Aid. You know how sometimes when you go to the doctor's and they stick you, they cover the spot with a cotton ball and then tape it down? That's what that's supposed to be.

Aurelia le: Azula _was_ the only other lipsticked character on the show, wasn't she? ;) You'll find out more about the ghosts soon enough.

**3. Azula Gives an Answer**

I'd been sure she was bluffing. How could this girl, this—_infuriating_ girl—how could she possibly sway them, the shadow-people, when I couldn't? What could she possibly say to change their minds? I hadn't even considered her deal, because I hadn't even considered she'd come through. But that day, there were no injections.

And to her credit, she wasn't smug. She sent me a smile, when she arrived, but not quite a grin – her manner was warm, infinitely serene, but not slick. She sat down beside me on the floor. Of course, there was no choice but to be contrary, maddening as I found this whole thing; lips sealed, I turned to face the wall. Never mind that I'd rolled over on my chain. Never mind that she was quiet too, behind me, and that wasn't what I'd foreseen. Instead of boasting, instead of badgering, instead of everything I'd expected and prepared for, she sat there behind me and she said nothing. Did nothing. Until I began to feel myself less and less a rebel, and more a stubborn child—until I felt almost stupid, holding out like this, for a cause so vague and pointless. Not that I _believed_ it would be better, but…what could it matter, really? Drown or surface. Breathe or don't. Lie here forever or let her do it, lay her hands on me, send me under. Things couldn't get much worse.

At least if I sat up, it'd stop this chain gouging my side.

So I sighed – a weary white flag of a sound, the last of a cold wind through bare trees – and hauled myself up. Laid my head against the wall. I heard the cork freed from the mouth of her waterskin, the glimmering swell of bubbles after. I heard them flicker, and dance, and glide over her hands like a second skin—a moment later, I felt them brush my temples. And it _was_ better, in a way. Maybe because I couldn't see her face. I still tensed, breath hitched in my throat, vines of gooseflesh twining over my limbs. I still felt the lap of icy tides. But they were shallow, this time, and I didn't sink; the water never closed above my head.

"How did you do it?" I asked, after awhile.

"Hm?"

"How'd you get them to quit giving me shots?" I closed my eyes. "I can't—I just don't see why they listened. They never listen to me."

She made a sound in her throat, soft and noncommittal. "Try to relax a little more, okay? Deep breaths." I bristled at that, reflexively – almost snapped, _don't tell me what to do. _But instead I breathed in, a long, slow pull of air through my nose. And let it out. And I sort of wished she'd been wrong, but she wasn't; with each deep breath, the sea calmed. "Why don't they listen?"

The next breath came out more like a snort, bitter and sharp. "Because they think I'm crazy."

"Are you?"

"No." At least, I didn't think so. To be honest, I'd never considered it, because it had never seemed to matter; sane or not, what I thought didn't count. I'd be here either way. "Of course not. Don't you think I'd know?"

"Maybe." She took a neutral tone, still as cloudless sky. "That would make it a mystery, though, wouldn't it?"

"What?"

"How you got here."

_How I got here. _It wasn't a question I'd ever asked. It seemed to me I'd always been here, chained to the wall of this cell. I knew this and nothing else, and that was just how things were – my world was the spiderwebs in the rafters, the film of dust on the bars. The unmoving eye that was my window, sometimes dark and sometimes light. The grimy dark corners. The mortar between stones. My world was the _clank_ of half-rusted fetters, the interlaced links of my chain; my world was a canvas straitjacket, too thick for the warm days, too thin for the cold ones. Always too tight around my waist. The things I could count, the things I could see, the things that remained the same were real to me—it wasn't good, it wasn't bad, it just _was_, and it always had been. There was no beginning, no end. Maybe I had congealed on this floor, crawled out from a crack in the wall. Maybe one day, I'd crumble to dirt.

"I didn't _get_ here," I told her, without much feeling. She wouldn't understand, but that was all right; I didn't expect her to. "I've always been here."

She didn't speak. For a long time, all I heard was the water's faint heartbeat, warm against my skin. "Everyone has to come from somewhere," she said finally, quietly, unable to keep a certain gravity from the words.

A dry smile flicked at my mouth. "I come from the dirt."

"What about the people who take care of you? Where do they come from?"

I shrugged, as best I could in the jacket. "They come from the walls."

"What about me?"

Without quite meaning to, I opened my eyes. The light, dim though it was, stung like pinpricks; I blinked and remembered to breathe, like she said, breathe and keep the riptide at bay. In and out. Up and down. Before I answered, I counted six deep breaths, slow as I could take them. "I don't know about you," I said numbly. "Maybe you come from my mind. Maybe I imagined you, and you're not real."

She didn't respond to that. I'd thought she would be angry, because of course, she wouldn't understand—but she said nothing, and a moment later, she withdrew her hands. I heard the swish and swirl of water, the cork popped back into her pouch. "That was good," she said. "Better than last time. If you're not getting shots, you should have plenty of free time, so practice your breathing till tomorrow. We'll get there before you know it." I didn't ask where _there_ was, precisely. I didn't say anything, but I could feel her watching me, with those too-soft eyes – once, I felt her almost touch me, the unsure half-weight of a hovering hand. I felt her reach out, and waver, and pull back at the last second. And look at me a little longer, before she spoke. "Can I ask you something?"

"If you want."

"You told me yesterday not to call you—something. You said it wasn't your name." I could hear her pause, hear her hesitate, and my shoulders stiffened."I just want to know – if I can't call you that, what _can_ I call you? What_ is_ your name?"

I sighed and shut my eyes again, still facing the wall. She _would_ ask a question like that. "Nothing," I told her, flatly. "I don't have one."


	4. Azula's Ghosts

**4. Azula's Ghosts**

"Why is it so bad?"

She returned to the subject the next day, halfway through our session. We sat in the center of the cell this time, me with my knees pulled to my chest, curled up and staring at the bars; I counted the gaps between them, and breathed. Behind me, she was silent. She could've vanished, for all I knew, but for the water in her hands. "What?"

"Your—that name. The one you said not to call you. What's wrong with it?"

I wasn't sure why she kept picking at this – what's so important about a name, anyway? – but I didn't like it. It was dangerous territory, to my mind, and it wasn't as if I could explain _why_; she'd never believe it if I tried. "You'd think I was crazy."

"Try me."

A frown furrowed my brow, less in anger than in thought. She couldn't possibly understand. I knew what she'd say, if I told her, what anyone would say; no sane person saw ghosts in her walls, slinking out like snakes from between the bricks. Heard them speak, in voices no one else could hear. And even if she did, a sane person wouldn't talk back. "Because." Normal people didn't see what I saw. Normal people didn't hear what I heard. She would say it, I _knew_ it, if I told her why – if I said, _I don't like that name because the ghosts use it_, if I said, _they have eyes to watch me, they have hands to touch me. I can't pretend they're not real. _"Because," I tried again, despite myself, "of the ghosts."

Instantly I felt my shoulders steel for impact, as if it'd be something I could feel. For the weight of a wide-eyed stare, heavy enough to break my back. I waited and braced but it didn't come, not right away, not even a minute later, after she'd made a quiet _mm _noise in her throat. "Okay. Can you tell me about them?"

I should have said _no_. "They come out of the walls," I said instead, very slowly, very softly, still feeling too much a burst dam. "At night. When I'm alone. When everyone else leaves, they come, and they watch me—for a long time. Sometimes it's all they do." I swallowed, as hard as I could. It didn't help me stop. "Other times, we talk. They talk to me. I talk back. They tell me stories, and—they tell me lies—always lies, that's how they are. They come close and whisper into my ears, so I can't sleep. They hold my face and look me in the eyes. Their skin is cold, clammy like a dead thing, and so is their breath—they sing and it sounds sort of like wind, like somebody crying far away. Like a glass bell." The down at the nape of my neck bristled, just from the memory of the sound. "Their eyes don't blink when they look at me. Their chests don't move when they breathe. They have legs but they don't walk, not like people do, and when they move—when they move they move like puppets, on strings. They don't listen when I talk to them, when I tell them to leave – and they always call me that name."

When the words dropped off, I heard her make a sound like _shh, _like waves rushing over the sand. "Relax," she said. "Deep breaths. You're shaking." I hadn't realized it, but I was. _I knew I should have said no_. "Tell me about what they look like."

"Well, they're—not always the same ones. There are a lot of them, and they all look different, but…" My mouth was suddenly dry. I swallowed again and closed my eyes, wondering if I might speak the ghosts to life. "Two of them come more than the others. Almost every night. It's a girl and a woman, pale, with dark hair; the girl has hers up in a knot. The woman does too, but there's a lot loose—her hair is long, past her shoulders. She wears a dress and a shawl. The girl wears…some kind of armor, with lots of layers, and boots. It looks heavy." I paused to ward off a chill, climbing my spine with each word. "And…they look alike, sort of, in the face. They both wear lipstick, and they have the same eyes. Yellow. Like cat's eyes."

She hushed me again, gently. I felt the water warm a little on my skin. "What do they say to you?" she asked.

"The girl tells me stories," I answered. "The woman tells me lies."

She didn't have any more questions, for awhile, and that was good – as bad as I wished I weren't, I was trembling. I couldn't get those yellow eyes out of my head. I tried to focus on deep breaths, like she'd said, and the pulse of the water; I looked down and counted the links on my fetters, one, two, three, four, five steel links from ankle to ankle. _One, two, three, four, five. _"Let's talk about something else," I heard her say in the midst of that, from what seemed like far away. "Tell me this. When you sleep – when the ghosts aren't around – do you dream?"_ One, two, three, four, five. _I nodded. "What kind of dreams do you have?"

"All kinds." _Relax. Deep breaths. _"I used to have a dream where I was a dragon. Not much anymore, now, but I used to have it every night." She made the _mm_ noise again, as if telling me to go on. "In that dream I was a red dragon, and I swallowed the sun. I could breathe fire, and lightning, and I scorched the earth and blackened the sky; I spread my wings and flew higher than the stars, higher than the moon. Up above everyone and everything and the whole world. I made it rain fire. And I watched it all burn, everyone and everything, and the whole world. I watched it all turn to ash."

It'd been a long time, since I'd had that dream last. It was almost hard to remember. But parts remained vivid, even now—parts like the feel of the fire, seething between fanged jaws. Rolling out in wild waves. "You haven't had it for awhile?" she asked, and again I nodded. "Tell me about a dream you have more now. "

"I—dream a lot about the blue room, now."

"What happens in the blue room?"

"Nothing." The word stuck and my head went lead-heavy, weak with a dull pain. I didn't like remembering this dream. "Nothing ever happens. It's just…this huge, dark, empty room, where everything's blue, and I'm alone in it. Always alone. I'm sitting and waiting for someone, I think…someone or something, something that's supposed to happen, someone that's supposed to come. But it never does. They never do. It's a long dream, always a long dream, and the whole time I just sit and wait and no one comes, no one ever comes. It's just me, all alone in the blue room." _Five links. _I went back to count them again. "You'd think I'd be used to it by now," I said after, staring at the floor. "I'm alone all the time. And you'd think I wouldn't mind, but—I hate that dream."

Then there was silence, until she was done. Until she saw whatever sign cued her to drop her hands, shed her gloves, fasten the pouch to her side. But she didn't leave right away, like she had the last time; instead, she came around and sat in front of me, legs crossed one over the other. Elbows planted on her knees. She laid her chin on one hand and looked at me, for a minute or two, with eyes I couldn't decode. "I'm going to tell you something," she said," and you're not going to like it. But you need to hear me out, okay?" I pressed my lips together and frowned back at her, not sure I could condone that idea with a nod. We both knew she'd go on regardless. "The things we talked about today—I know you think they're dreams, and ghosts. I know it's…probably easier, for you to see them that way. And I know you're not going to believe this, because it's not what you want to hear, but I think the things you see are memories."

She was right. I could feel myself harden, hackles raised. As if the words themselves could hurt me. "That's not possible," I answered, rough, with a jagged edge. "I've always been here."

"I know you think so."

"Well, _I_ know I _know_ so. And it's not because it's _easy_, it's because it's true." I felt a scowl carve its way across my lips. Skin prickling with a growing sense of betrayal, I jerked my gaze from hers and faced the wall. "Go away."

"If I could just—"

"_I said go away!_"

When she left, I realized I was shaking again – this time from anger, or something like it. With some blunt, dark misery, spreading like a virus in my gut. It was nameless, faceless, but it was the worst I'd felt in a long time; worse than the injections, worse than the dreams. Worse even than the ghosts, watching me with yellow eyes.


	5. Azula in the Blue Room

This chapter will be the first in a series of intermittent "ghost chapters" – not quite dream sequences, but similar. They'll be shorter than regular chapters, and somewhat more…surreal. Also, they're in italics. And in present tense. Hooray?

**5. Azula in the Blue Room **

_I wake from a dream of the blue room, cold all over. Wet with sweat. I suck in a harsh, gasping breath, scraping its way down my throat; this one was worse than the rest. I was alone still, waiting, in the same room – that same hollow room, bathed in blue light, no doors and no windows – but this time I was waiting for _her_, I know it. I just do. I was waiting for her, the girl in the blue dress, and she never came. _

_"It's better that way."_

_It's the girl in armor. She appears in the corner, regards me with yellow eyes; step by not-quite-a-step, she approaches. Unlike the woman, she doesn't bend to my level, or kneel on the ground beside me. She stands and stares down, arms folded, face cool._

_"You think you need her?" she sneers. "You think she's your friend? Don't be stupid." She looks at me like I'm a disappointment. A ship without an engine, rusted and forever docked. "She's an enemy, Azula. She's always _been_ an enemy, and she's an enemy still; if it weren't for her, you wouldn't even be here. If it weren't for her, you'd be Firelord, and the world would bend to your will." Her eyes release mine, drifting up to the window. "Don't you remember the courtyard?"_

_She tells me the story. Wanders the cell, twists her fingers through the bars, and tells me the story; I've heard it a hundred times, but she doesn't care. She speaks of a princess, clever and beautiful, with the care of her kingdom in her hands. She'd sworn to protect it, says the girl, and was soon tested – no sooner had her father gone than rebels stormed her courtyard, one a mutinous commoner, the other a traitor after her crown. Of course, she fought fearlessly. Of course, as a princess she was strong of will, sharp of mind and sound of body, more than fit to defend the empire. But the peasant was sly, versed in the lesser arts, and she used this skill to trap the princess; it was not an honorable victory, nor was it just, but swine care little to what ends their savagery goes. Brave to the last second, the princess was nevertheless like a great tree, felled—_

_"—in her own courtyard," I say quietly, knowing the ending word for word. She stops, yellow eyes glassy, and looks at me. Her mouth drops into a frown. "I know."_

_"Then you know why you can't trust her." The words are hard with conviction, dark as night. "She's a liar. She says she's here to _heal _you, here to _help_—all she wants is to make you weak. She's hurt you before and she'll do it again, Azula, I promise you that."_

_She doesn't make sense, but I don't argue. Her stories are just stories, nothing more – why should the peasant and the princess matter to me?_


	6. Azula Concedes

Well, given the dearth of comments, it would seem no one's actually reading anymore. =\ Hard to find inspiration when it's evident nobody cares.

**6. Azula Concedes**

She came back. Despite my dream, the girl in the blue dress came back, when the midday sun peered through my window. And just like always – just like nothing had changed – she smiled.

"Hey," she said, like the first time.

"Hay is for ostrich-horses."

For a second, she just blinked at me, as if she thought someone else might've spoken. I wasn't quite sure I had, myself. But then she laughed, surprised and bemused, shaking her head; I realized that, at least around me, she'd never done that before. "Okay, then. Not what I expected, but okay." To be honest, it wasn't what I'd expected, either – I didn't even know where I'd learned that phrase – but it'd seemed right, somehow. It was fitting, I guess, to be cavalier in the wake of nightmares. It might help to chase them off. "Listen, I'm sorry about yesterday," she went on, sitting down beside me. "I shouldn't have said what I said. I'm here to help you, not push you or condescend to you – so if you're not ready to remember, I won't try to make you."

Her smile was fainter, maybe sadder, but still there. She looked at me for a minute and I didn't know what to think, or what to say – she was the only one who ever apologized to me, and I still wasn't sure how to handle it. All I could do was blink at her, mute and uncertain, then at the ground when the silence stretched on. And maybe that silence emboldened her, somehow; maybe it was the look on my face. Maybe she really did make me weak. For whatever reason, after awhile she reached out, and I felt something brush my face—just the tip of a finger, as she tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. But it was enough.

"Don't touch me!"

It came out sharper than I'd meant. I might've jerked back too hard. Still, it was too much, too soon; yes, the ghosts touched me, and so did the shadow-people. All the time. But I didn't like it, I never liked it, only put up with it because I couldn't make them stop. Only because they wouldn't listen, like she did—I thought she would, this time too, and I was right. Her hand snapped back like she'd been burned. She didn't protest, didn't look at me, just sat with her hand in her lap and her eyes on the floor and I watched her, glaring, waiting for what would come next. Would she apologize? Would she try again? Or maybe get angry, finally, maybe strike back? Maybe get up and walk out of the cell, forever—maybe give up?

But no. She didn't do any of it. She just sat there, wordless, not really looking at anything, and that was when I remembered my dream. Remembered waiting for her, in the blue room, and wanting her to come; I hated myself for that, a little bit, but I couldn't help it. I didn't want her to get up and walk out, forever. I didn't want to be alone.

So I did what I had to do. "What…what did you mean?" I said slowly, somewhat grudgingly, my voice an awkward end to the silence. "When you said…those things are memories?"

She glanced up, heartened. Hope in her eyes. It occurred to me to be jealous, of how easily she mended. "Well, I—I didn't mean it literally, of course," she said, sort of breathless, as if the words had been stored up and waiting for a long time. "That would be stupid. I mean, it's not as if I think you were a dragon once, and you just _forgot—_it's more like the dreams are symbols. Bits and pieces of reality, mixed up and filled in and coming back like fantasies, or fears. They all begin with memories – the dragon, the blue room, everything – and there's truth in all of them, some of which I know and some of which I don't, since I'm not you, and most of which _you_ don't know, since _you're_ not...exactly…you, either. Not really." She paused and bit her lip, I thought to keep her tongue from running away with her. I'd never seen anyone so eager. "As for the ghosts," she added, "I think they're people you know. Knew. They're memories, too, and so are the stories they tell; for better or for worse, it's all part of you."

It was…a lot to absorb, to say the least. And I won't pretend I believed it, not right away. But she wanted me to listen, not just listen but _hear_, and I felt a growing, disquieting need not to fail her – so I kept my mouth shut, and nodded.

"Now, what I want to do is—well, it's like I said. I want to help you." A smile flicked across her face and then vanished, fading into her eyes. She unhooked the waterskin at her side, but she didn't uncork it as usual; instead, she just held it in her lap, toying with its cord as she spoke. "That's where this comes in. It's more complex than this – I don't fully understand it myself – but I've found that, when it comes to healing, minds and bodies are pretty much the same. When you're healing a wound, you try to unblock the paths around it, all the energy twisted up inside; when you're healing the mind, you do the same thing. Thoughts and memories are just energy, in a different form, and they can get twisted too. Sometimes, it's because someone else tries to make them, like—like with Jet."

The smile came back, for a moment, this time definitely sad. "But sometimes, it's because something really bad happens. When things get bad enough that you can't handle it, that you just want to forget it, that you'd rather be anybody else…when it hurts too much to remember, all of that energy reacts. It gets tangled up, like a big knot, until you don't know what's real and what isn't. What you did, what you couldn't do. Who you are. You lock it all up, deep inside of you, and you can't undo that by yourself. That's why I'm here."

The ghosts themselves hadn't told me such stories. Briefly, strangely, I found myself thinking that even the girl in armor would envy her; her tales of war and glory were nothing compared to this. "Even if that's all true," I ventured, "and I'm not saying it is – this is all just hypothetical, you know – it doesn't make sense. You say you want to help me? How does it help to bring back bad memories?"

"Well, it might not seem helpful, I'll give you that," she said. "After all, it's easier to forget. If nothing else, it would be…very _easy_, for you to spend your life this way. It's easy to sit here all day, every day, doing nothing at all – being spoon-fed and sponge-bathed and watched around the clock, by people who expect nothing from you. It's easy to watch the sun rise and fall outside your window. It's easy to be nothing, to be no one, to believe you come from the dirt and that's all you've ever known, to convince yourself the world stops here. It's easy, and it's safe, and it's familiar; maybe it's not good, but at least you know it won't be bad. Every day, you know you'll wake up in the same place, hitched to the same chain. Wearing the same straitjacket. Stuck in the same loop." She sent me a pointed glance. "But be honest with me. Is that _really_ all you want out of life?"

_Every day, you know you'll wake up in the same place, hitched to the same chain. _I'd always found the thought comforting. "Maybe it is," I said mulishly, though I wasn't so sure anymore. "What's it to you, anyway? Why should you care?"

"That's a good question." With a sigh, she pushed a hand through her hair, raking the long, dark waves back from her face. I saw her close her eyes, and let her head tip to rest against the wall. "Not that you'd know this," she said, "or remember it, but we're not friends. Far from it, actually. You think these people think _you're _crazy? You should've seen how my friends looked at _me_, when I said I wanted to help you. And at first, I thought they were right." She shook her head. "That's just how I am, I guess. I have to help everyone. Even when it's stupid, even when it's crazy – even when it gets me in trouble. Even when anyone else would know better."

I frowned. "Thanks."

She opened her eyes just to roll them, half-smiling. "You know I don't mean it like that." Still absently fingering the waterskin, she cast her gaze towards the ceiling, as if searching for something there. I got the feeling that she was trying not to look at me. "Look, maybe I don't have a reason to care about you. Maybe it doesn't make sense. But when I came on that third day, and asked you how you got here—when you told me you come from the dirt—I thought, _nobody deserves to feel like that. _And that was when I decided I couldn't give up."

I didn't reply. I couldn't think how to start. And she didn't say anything, either, for awhile – I closed my eyes and counted three minutes. Three silent, endless minutes, one hundred and eighty seconds, and her words hung in the air, and I turned them over in my head. Again and again. Sometimes, people avoid your eyes when they're lying to you, so they won't give themselves away; sometimes, they do it when they're saying something hard, so they won't lose their nerve halfway through. _Did she say she cared about me?_

But then her eyes snapped downwards, and she smiled again. "Well. That's enough of that, huh?" She held up the pouch. "Let's get started."


	7. Azula in the Red Room

Another ghost chapter, evidently. And seven chapters in, Azula finally knows Katara's name, or realizes that she knows it at any rate. Now we can refer to her as such. Small victories.

**7. Azula in the Red Room **

_This time I dream of a red room, the color of blood. I've never been here before. I'm alone, as in the blue room, but before me stands a mirror; it's taller than I am, and broad. A boundless glass sea. But all I can see are the walls around me, the pillars and shadows – I blink down at myself, touch my chest, my hair, see my feet on the ground but not in the glass. I reach out to touch it, feel it cool against my hand, but no one reaches back. I stare into it and there's no face, nothing to prove I'm real, I'm here—nothing but the red room, and its reflection. _

_I wake up shaking. I try to still, to breathe, to find something to count – the rafters, the cobwebs, the goosebumps crawling my legs – but it's no good. I shiver as if desperately cold. Only when my eyes move from the ceiling can I stop, and then all at once, suddenly—because then, suddenly, I meet a pair of yellow eyes. _

_The woman sits beside me, smiling. She looms overhead like a stormcloud, veiled by darkness, long hair spilling over her shoulders. "I'm so happy for you."_

_Her tone is gentle, as always. The words are innocent. But they punch a pit in my heart all the same. "What?"_

_A pale hand falls to stroke my hair, carding slowly through its tangles. She gazes down at me, yellow eyes glittering, and speaks in her dreamy, far-off way. "It's finally going to happen. I thought it wouldn't, but it is; I was afraid you'd never know, but you will, you will. You're so lucky." _

_My voice comes out a rasp, weak and distrustful. "What are you talking about?"_

_"Katara, of course. Your friend." I didn't even know that was her name. "She cares for you, Azula. She wants to help you. She's giving you a chance, _finally_, someone's giving you a chance—she could show you so much, if you'd let her. She could be so good for you."_

_I feel my stomach churn, as though I might actually be sick. I always forget how bad the woman is. Even the red room was better than her lies. "Don't lie to me," I answer, closing my eyes, pushing all of my strength into the words. "She doesn't care about me. She said it herself, she's here because that's how she is—because she has some—_compulsion_ to help people, even ones she doesn't like. She's here because she—because she thinks it's her duty, not because of me." _

_I hear the smile when she speaks, the sunshine, the tender song that worms into my skin and eats me alive. "That's not true. She sees something in you. You're more than all of this, Azula, more than what you've become, and she _sees_ that—she sees what's good in you, how much you have to give. She wants to bring it out. She wants to know you."_

_"Don't lie to me!" This time, my voice is a hard, shrill scrape, like a brake pulled too fast. I pull away from her hand, jaw set, shaking again; I'll never hate anything so much as this woman, and all the sweetness on her tongue. She talks like she knows, but she doesn't—she tells me what I am but she's always wrong, too kind in the worst way. I am nothing worth knowing. I am a thing of dust and dirt, a smear on a crumbling wall. The girl in armor speaks of swine, but I know I'm lower – if anything I am a rat, born in the darkness, dying there day by day. I am hollow and there's nothing inside me, nothing to bring out, nothing but a shell wrapped in canvas. The woman must see it. She lies. "_Don't lie to me!_" I shout, scrape bleeding into screech, and sit up to face her. I jerk my head down at the fetters, the straitjacket, everything I am. "_Who would want to know this?"

_But she's gone._


	8. Azula Leaves the Harbor

A brief note on the passage of time here: it's supposed to be unclear. As with the number of years Azula's been in the asylum, the time Katara spends healing her is pretty much up to the reader; so long as Azula's narration doesn't specify that a certain number of days have passed in between one chapter and the next, you're free to assume anything within reason.

**8. Azula Leaves the Harbor**

Katara came every day, for a long time. I counted the days, but eventually they became weeks, and the weeks became months; having nothing to write with, I couldn't keep track. But it didn't matter. She came anyway, around noon when the sun was high, and it was always the same – she'd sheathe her hands in water, drawn shimmering from the skin. Rest them against my temples. And the water would pulse, and flicker, and while it did whatever it was meant to do, we'd talk.

I would tell her about the ghosts, and my dreams. She'd ask me questions. Sometimes, she'd tell me about her life, in the world outside those walls; I was never quite sure I believed her, when she said it was real, but I liked the stories she told. They weren't as strange as the girl in armor's, and there was more to them than mine. When she asked after my days – which she didn't, very often, and for which I was glad – I never had much to tell her, outside of _I had a bath today, _or _rice for dinner again. _She asked me once if I wasn't bored living this way, with nothing to do once she left. I told her no, because before she came around I hadn't been. _Should've_ been, maybe, but wasn't. Before Katara, a colorless world had seemed safe. And I didn't tell her so, but as the weeks wore on, I developed a disturbing habit of looking forward to her visits – and enjoying the aftermath less and less.

Maybe to even the scales, I asked _her_ once what was taking so long. Why, exactly, it was taking so long to "heal" me – why she couldn't just untangle these knots of mine and be on her way, not that I wanted that. She said _these things take time; you can't just grab a string and unravel it all at once. You have to sort of…loosen the knots, gently. Day by day. _I asked her, if that was so, why I couldn't feel it happening. She said _you can't?_

And I didn't answer. But I thought to myself—_how would I know?_

Then one day, instead of her pouch she brought a bag, full of something that clattered when she set it down. I looked up at her, one eyebrow cocked, questioning – and she smiled. "I thought we'd try something new today," she said, taking a seat. "Instead of the water."

She opened the bag and produced two rolls of paper, tied with short, waxed bits of string. Then came the brushes, and the ink, and the trays for mixing the ink—all of it in pairs. She went on smiling throughout, as though all of this were perfectly normal, as though she expected me to know what she was getting at. As though she thought we'd really just sit and draw together, like two little girls in school. "Right," I said slowly, skeptically, gesturing with a nod to the jacket. "In case you've forgotten, I can't really…do much with that."

"I know," she answered. "That's why we're going to take off the straitjacket."

I could actually feel my face pale. I was sure, in that moment, _absolutely_ sure that I'd never heard anything so ridiculous in my life – the jacket couldn't come off, not now, not _ever_. That's just the way it was. She might as well have asked me to take off my skin. "You can't."

"Sure I can. I asked the staff and they said it's fine, so long as I…you know, take responsibility." I couldn't believe how airy her tone was, how bright her face. She spoke as if this were something _normal_—as if it weren't so foreign as to be absurd, unthinkable by any rational rule. Maybe her friends were right. Maybe she _was_ crazy. "Come on. Don't tell me you don't want to."

"I don't!" How could she not see it? How could she not get how _wrong _this was? Sure, maybe I'd wondered sometimes, what it would be like; there'd been moments when I'd wished for a free hand, to address some brief, meaningless need. To scratch an itch, or rub an eye, or push the hair from my face. But they were fleeting, always, and so bizarre as to be safe – I could wish if I pleased but it would never happen, like a wish for the moon on a chain. When you wish for the moon, you don't think of the tides, or the dark sky. And when I'd wished I hadn't thought of being without my shell, the only armor I had—I didn't want to be helpless, anchored to nothing, drowning in useless freedom. I liked the safety of the straitjacket. It was my shelter. "You can't take it off."

Her smile wavered, sad like I'd seen so many times. "I'm going to have to, eventually," she said after a minute, not so bright this time, much softer. "Someone will. You're not going to spend your life this way." She didn't say _you don't want to, _I realized, or _you can't_; she said _you're not, _as if it were a foregone conclusion. Between the two of us, she'd always had more faith in me. "What are you afraid of?"

I bristled. Maybe I _was _afraid, but I wasn't going to say so to her. I couldn't tell her how sometimes, I felt like a paper boat, drifting away on a black sea. I couldn't tell her that sometimes, the jacket felt like a harbor. "Nothing," I said, avoiding her eyes. "I just—I don't want you to take it off."

"Mmm." She put a hand on my shoulder then, and like she'd pulled me up on the first day, she turned my back towards her. Before I could tell her not to touch me. Before I could protest, before I could resist, she took matters into her own hands. "Try not to overthink it," she said gently, into my ear. "Deep breaths."

I would've been enraged, if I hadn't been so stunned. If I hadn't locked up, every muscle, every joint, when I heard her undo the first strap—there were five of them, from neck to waist, leather bands with metal buckles. The first clinked softly against her fingers. It was an odd sound – I'd expected something more sinister, maybe breaking glass, or snapping jaws – and the next one was no worse, just that little _clink_, like a bell. Then the next one, and the next one, and finally the fifth one until all of the straps were undone, and she started in on the buttons. There were more, but I counted those too, each faint _snap _as she loosed another button from its loop. _One, two, three, _tried to keep breathing, _four, five, six, _ignored the slow slackening of canvas, the sick, cheerless notion that this might actually feel good. I couldn't let myself think that. Hope only rose to be crushed.

_Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. _The sixteenth snap was the last. After that she undid the knots on each side, where the sewn-shut ends of my sleeves were laced to the jacket. And then she just peeled the whole thing off, pulled it down over my shoulders, like the shed skin of a snake—I couldn't quite move, so she slid my arms free of the sleeves. _Deep breaths, _she reminded me. _There's nothing to be scared of._

Was there? I didn't know anymore. I knew nothing, saw nothing, save for the jerky, awkward rise of arms that didn't feel like mine; they moved like the ghosts, like wooden puppet limbs, pale and bony and numb. My eyes wouldn't move away. It was hypnotic, watching their wrists roll, their fingers fan. Their palms turned towards me, open, maps of creases and cracks. Their nails were notched like an old tree. One by one the fingers parted, came together, parted again…long, thin as reeds those fingers were, the color of snow. Skeleton-hands. I sat and watched them for a long time, until finally, I remembered that I controlled them. That it was something inside me making them move. They still felt dead, like it wouldn't hurt if I pricked them, but I realized they belonged to _me_—that all this time, inside the straitjacket, they'd been there.

After awhile, she slid a brush into my palm. She pushed an ink-swabbed tray close to my knee. I blinked, and saw a sheet of paper on the ground before me – when had she put _that_ there? – but I didn't question it. Beside me, she was laying down her own ink, brush tracing the dips of an ocean or maybe a rose. So I followed her lead and before I knew it, we really were sitting and drawing together, like two little girls in school.

Maybe we spent fifteen minutes that way. Maybe an hour. I wasn't counting, for once, but I wasn't thinking about my drawing—most of all, I was just watching my hand, as it glided over the paper. Watching my wrist turn and flick. Still somewhat in awe, that such a thing could happen, that I hadn't yet crumbled to dust. That I could_ exist_ outside the straitjacket, so much a part of who I was. I was so caught up that I didn't notice her, when she came to kneel beside me; I barely even heard her speak. "What's that?"

I considered it. What _had_ I ended up drawing, so consumed in the act itself? It just looked like a grid. "I don't know," I said, gazing down at the latticed squares, each the same size and shape. "The wall, maybe. Or the bars."

She pointed to the tiny character in the corner of one square, like those in every other. "You numbered them?"

"No," I corrected her, without thinking. "I _counted_ them. I count everything. Didn't you know that?"

Had I really never told her, after all this time? Could she know me and not know that? It had always seemed too obvious to mention; like the jacket, the counting just _was_. Always had been. But somehow, she hadn't known—and for some reason, she was smiling. "As a matter of fact, I didn't. And you're going to wish you hadn't told me. Because now that I do, I have another challenge for you." She plucked the brush from my hand, still glistening. In one quick stroke, she blotted out the total, where I'd written it at the top. "The next time you feel like counting something," she told me, "don't."


	9. Azula and the Key

Okay, being upfront here:

It's really discouraging for me to get all of these e-mails about "so-and-so has added _Citadel_ to their story alert" and "so-and-so has added _Citadel_ to their favorite stories" et cetera, et cetera, then come to FF and find out that next to none of these so-and-sos could be bothered to take a second to review. If you like this story enough to add it to your favorites, or your story alerts, or if you're enjoying reading this at _all_, I'm asking you to please take a minute of your time to submit a comment. One of the main reasons I like FF is because it allows authors to receive feedback, so we don't feel like we're writing in a void – but it's kind of getting to that point. You can only talk for so long, when you feel like nobody's listening.

**TL; DR:** If you read, review. It doesn't have to be detailed. It doesn't have to be long. But if you want to see more of this, I need to know.

**9. Azula and the Key**

Some days, we'd draw. She'd bring paper, and ink, and we'd play at being artists; most of the time she drew stars, or flowers, pretty things I'd never seen but somehow knew. For my part, I drew grids. Perfect webs of squares, like the bars and bricks all around me, though I had to stop counting them to meet her challenge. It was a hard habit to break. She tried to help by suggesting I draw other things – a river, a cloud, maybe a crescent moon – but I couldn't see the sense in it. For all I knew, none of those things were real. My world was all grids, so grids were what I drew, every time on every sheet.

Some days, we'd eat. I liked those days. Before she came around, my meals were only things I could be fed, simple things the shadow-people could mix up and spoon into my mouth. Rice, mostly, and soft potatoes, and vegetables sometimes. Everything steamed and tasteless. But with my hands, I could eat the things she brought for us—things like fruit, and chocolate, and little cakes with cream inside. I could drink tea and peel oranges. I could crack nuts, pit cherries, scrape noodles from the bottom of a bowl – and best of all, I didn't need anyone's help.

Some days, we'd sew. She said it would be helpful, to get some strength back in my hands, so she brought needles and cloth and showed me the stitches she knew. It was dull work, but soothing, too. Sort of comfortably mindless. When I got better at it, she started saying how she'd like to have me make something to wear, on the days when I didn't wear the straitjacket. As it was, my grimy burlap shift wasn't much to look at. Not that I cared how I looked, really – who was going to see me? – but I liked the idea of a project.

And some days – most days – we did the same thing we'd always done. The healing sessions proceeded as planned. Except she'd undo the straitjacket, before she started, and so I got used to being without it. We went on for a month like that, or maybe two, until it was routine – until I began looking forward to my freedom, each day when she came, and resenting its end. At the end of each visit, the straps seemed to buckle a little tighter, the canvas to chafe a little more. The jacket began to feel more a prison and less a home. I know that was what she wanted, because she wanted me to _want _to move forward; she thought I should want things to change. And sometimes, I did.

Other times, I didn't. Other times I thought I'd give anything, had I anything to give—anything to stop the world shattering around me, the pillars of my life melting to smoke. _Hope only rises to be crushed. _

And then one day, she brought the key.

There was nothing special about it. Just a skeleton key, salmon-scale silver, glistening in the sun. First, she undid the jacket, and then she held it up. "Do you know what this is?"

"It's a key."

She smiled. "Do you know what it unlocks?"

"No, but I'm pretty sure I won't like it."

At that she laughed, and shook her head. Then she set the key down, in a stray sunbeam that streaked the floor; for a moment, I watched it glitter. Watched the light glance off it, dance with it, flash and flicker and wink. And then I looked up, and met her eyes—those summer-sky blue eyes, locked on me this whole time. Etched with a language I couldn't read. Some breed of unfathomable tenderness, for someone who couldn't have been me. "Do you trust me?"

I blinked. "What?"

"You heard what I said."

Her voice was soft, but it didn't waver. I pressed my teeth into my tongue. "Uh, I don't know," I answered, uneasily, like feeling my way through a dark cave. "I guess."

She shook her head again, slower this time. "It's either yes or no. Do you trust me?"

I looked away. Couldn't meet her gaze. I took a breath, and swallowed hard, and realized that I'd only ever trusted _things_; I'd placed my faith in my straitjacket, with its grip that would never loosen. In my chain, like a root that couldn't be cut. In things unyielding, like my irons, like the bars of my cell—in things I could count, like the bricks in the wall. I'd counted them every day and they'd stayed the same. If it didn't move, it couldn't leave me. If it didn't breathe, it couldn't lie.

But had she lied to me? Never. Had she left me? Not more than a day. She always came back, even when I thought she wouldn't—even though it would've been so easy, to walk away. She held on with a resolve unmet by canvas, more tenacious than one _thing_ could ever be; when buttons snapped and leather frayed, I felt sure she'd still be there. When inseverable ropes broke, when infallible walls fell, she'd be on her feet in the wreckage. When the summer monsoons howled, she'd be a reed bound to the earth. Katara and I were both stubborn, willful to a fault, but unlike me that made her reliable – someone stronger than irons, stronger than chains. Every promise she made, she kept. Everything she said came true.

So was this what it meant, then, to trust a person? To feel that the world would stop turning before she let you down?

"Yes."

Her smile broadened. Already far too vulnerable, I couldn't look her in the eyes, but I saw her smile and I could guess how they'd shine – bright as stars, like always, with a pride I couldn't resent because it was pride in _me_. I got the sense she would've hugged me, if she hadn't known I'd push her off and spoil the mood. So instead she picked up the key, still catching the sun between her fingers. And then I felt it, and then I knew – maybe I'd suspected, before, but then I_ knew_ – what she wanted, what she'd been getting at this whole time. Her fingers were warm against my ankle, gently turning one of the cuffs. The chain rattled between them. I heard the key_ clink_ as it slid into the lock, the little metal mouth set into the shackle; I heard a sharp _crack_, a noise like breaking bones. And I felt the fetters come loose.

I'd never felt so naked in my life. Or so—_adrift_, small in the scheme of things, desperate for a hold. So when she held out her hand I grabbed onto it, out of instinct. Too late did I understand what she meant to do; too late did I realize she'd stood, but hadn't let go, and she wanted me to stand too. "I can't."

I spit the words out on a reflex. I'd never actually stood up, not that I could remember, not ever here in this place—I couldn't imagine how I'd _start_, but she didn't care. She just went on smiling. "You can," she said. "Trust me."

I should've known that would come back to bite me.

But I'd said I did. And she wasn't letting go. As always, she was a reed bound to the earth, and I knew better than to play the monsoon. So I gathered my breath, and steeled my grasp—and—honestly, I can't say what happened next. It all seemed surreal. One minute I was on the ground, looking up at her, and the next I was on my feet; one minute I was still, heart almost ceasing to beat, and the next the world had shifted around me. I didn't feel myself stand up. My legs slid ice-floe numb beneath me, stiff and senseless as wood. My feet didn't register my weight.

I stumbled, lost for breath, and clung to her shoulder for balance. Shameful, maybe, but I'd sooner have died than let go—everything seemed so _far away, _up there, the floor miles from my reach. The cell became an impassable gulf. I couldn't stand straight on my own, much less _move_, and I almost said _I can't_; the words rang in my head, _I can't do this, I can't do this, _but I had no breath to speak them. She took my hand and I answered with a vise-grip, as if to say _don't you dare make me regret this. _As if to say _I'll kill you if you let go. _However silently, terror had made me spiteful, and I devised a thousand new threats with each step – followed her without ever really knowing I was doing it, so great was the fear that I couldn't. Hated her, hated this whole thing, clutched her hand like a raft in a storm.

And, when we reached the cell door, felt I'd been socked in the gut. _How did we get here? _My head, despite my own will, whipped from the wall to the bars. I must've made some undignified face, too, because I caught her stifling a laugh. But I couldn't help it; suddenly, all that short-lived malice was gone, and I was left knowing that the world still turned. With the fact—the maddening miracle—that she hadn't let me down.

She turned and looked at the cell behind us, nodding as though I should do the same. Smiled again – as if she'd ever stopped – and squeezed my hand. "Take a good look, if you want," she said. "We're not coming back."


	10. Azula Moves In

Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed; you have no idea how happy it's made me. ^_^ If every chapter could manage even half the number of comments on this last one, I would be more than satisfied. As I said in my author's note for Chapter Nine, inspiration comes much easier when I feel like I'm not writing in a void, and motivation along with it. I enjoy writing so much more when I hear from the people I'm writing for.

Responses, to those whose comments warranted them:

N3phyts: It'd be cheating to give away the nature of the ending, but unless all of my readers mysteriously abandon me somewhere along the line, this story _will_ have one. Dead fics frustrate me as much as anyone else, and I don't intend to write one.

Amy Raine: As I'm sure you know, that's one of the challenges of writing a convincing postfinale Azula (if there is such a thing) – finding a balance between allowing her to recover, and retaining her character. At this point, I'm choosing not to focus on the "scheming" side of Azula's personality, since it's far from all there is to her and since, if Katara's doing her job right, it should be taking a back seat anyway. Oh, and in response to your (flattering?) review of _Circles_, I am not now nor have I ever been a psychologist or a patient. Though, being a college student, I _am_ used to living in what amounts to a cell. =\

Aurelia le: I appreciate observant reading, but I hadn't considered that an error, since I figured the orderlies (AKA "shadow people") would simply work around the straitjacket. That is, they'd be washing everything below and above the torso. Which wouldn't be very thorough, and would leave our heroine considerably grimy, but that's a fact I had planned to deal with in Chapter Eleven, anyway. =P So…you know. Look forward to that?

Floria: Of course she did! Because Katara's JUST THAT AWESOME! _; By which I mean that I wasn't overly fond of Katara's Mary Sue tendencies in canon. I mean, in the context of this story, she could've easily ripped the technique off someone she met, or a book she read – but I feel like, if it _were_ canon, she'd be inventing therapies all over the place. Because she's Katara. And she's naturally amazing. But honestly, I have no right to complain about it, since me writing her as Azula's personal Jesus doesn't exactly help.

To everyone else, and everyone in general: thanks again, sincerely. Keep reading, and of course, keep reviewing. ^_~

**10. Azula Moves In**

The world outside was real. She had told me so, again and again, but I'd never been sure until I saw it – until we left the cell, my hand stuck fast to hers, moving slow so I wouldn't stumble. Everything was new that day. The air smelled different in that corridor, the sun looked different through those windows, everything I saw and heard and touched outside was different than it had been before. At first, it was like walking through a dream. At first, I kept waiting to wake up, to slip through a gap in the floor and fall back into shackles; I wasn't sure if I wanted it, but for awhile I was sure it would happen.

But it didn't. The world was _real._ I could feel it, I could taste it, I could breathe it in—I could look out the windows and see it, the earth and water and sky. The buildings full of people who weren't she and I. And this place, too, this hall that housed my cell, pocked with rows of other doors just like mine. Like a great stone tree, one wing branched off into another, and another, and gave way to courtyards and anterooms; for a long time, we wandered them in near-silence, broken only by her occasional spurts of narration. She kept calling this place _the asylum, _as if I knew what that meant.

And she called the shadow-people _the staff, _when they passed us in the halls. Every now and then one would slink by, tight-faced, clutching a clipboard or pushing a cart. They would send her a smile – a pale, queasy sort of smile, with no teeth – and she'd wave, and smile back. But they never smiled at me. They seemed afraid to even _look_ at me, glancing up from beneath knit brows, quailing when they met my eyes. They always gave us a wide berth. And maybe I should've been insulted, or at least dismayed—but for some reason, when the shadow-people cringed, all I could feel was pride.

So for awhile, I was distracted. There were too many new things to look at, too many strange thoughts to think; I didn't have the time, nor the breath, nor the presence of mind to ask what she'd meant, when she'd said _we're not coming back. _It barely even occurred to me. But then we turned down a new hall, far from the first. It was long, like the the first one, and quiet – but like everything else, it was different. The walls were smooth, the windows were glassed, and the floor under my feet was wood, not stone. This hall wasn't brick and mortar, but plaster and paint. And each door had a number.

We stopped at number twelve. From her sash Katara produced a second key, engraved with the same number – and the second I saw it, I remembered. "What did you mean?" I said suddenly, before she could open the door. "When you said we weren't going back?"

She smiled. "You'll see."

She extracted her hand from mine, pulling free of the knot I'd made of our fingers. She unlocked the door – this one made of wood, not steel – and before I knew it, we were inside; whether I'd been steered or towed or gone of my own will, I wasn't sure, but one way or another I ended up in that room with her. Not that it was a bad room. It was small, which I suppose was nice, seeing as I'd gotten used to small spaces. There wasn't much in it – just a bed, pushed against one wall, and a chest of drawers and a small table – which was also nice, seeing as I don't know what I'd do with more. It was carpeted, and painted white. There was a little window above the bed. It was certainly nonthreatening, nondescript even—but _still. Does she actually expect me to_ live_ here?_

"Sit down," she said, and I assumed she didn't mean on the floor. Of course, I wasn't used to chairs, but she pulled one out from the table and sat; taking my cues from her, I did the same. "You're not stupid."

I raised an eyebrow. "Right."

"So I don't need to explain this." She sat back in her chair, her eyes knowing, her smile faded but still warm. "I _know_ you like getting out of the straitjacket. You can't tell me you don't. And I figured if you can handle that – which you can, obviously, you have been for months now – you can handle this."

I didn't answer. There was a lot I could've said, in that moment – could've, should've, would've said, if I'd been sure enough to speak – but I didn't, because I wasn't. I didn't know how I felt. So I just shrugged, and looked down at my lap.

"All right." Somehow, even her sigh was gentle. I didn't look up, but I heard her push back the chair and stand up, twirling the key between her fingers. "I'm going to go for awhile. I need to take care of some things. But I'll be back, so—get some rest, okay? You must be tired."

I was. I'd never _done_ so much in one day. But when she left, locking the door behind her – because of course, it locked from the outside – I just sat there. Still as stone in that chair. Feeling, petty though it was, that I'd taken enough orders from her.

She did come back, after awhile, and she brought dinner. Two bowls of rice, with chicken and peas. This time, though, she didn't sit at the table; instead, she set the tray on the bed and climbed up next to it, settling her back against the wall. Then she looked at me, and patted the space beside her, and really, what choice did I have? I gave in and joined her. And I'd never have said it out loud, not on my life, but it was almost nice to be close to her – to sit with her on the bed, shoulder to shoulder, in the calm of the falling sun. Nice to know I could still trust her, to come back when she said she would. Nice to know we'd stay the same, she and I, even when everything else had changed.

"So I'm just supposed to live here now?" I said to her eventually, when my bowl was almost empty. When our list of other topics had run dry.

"Yeah, pretty much," she answered, and glanced at me. "Is that okay?"

I gave another shrug, a sort of half-hearted bob of one shoulder. "It's fine, I guess," I said, spearing a pea with one of my chopsticks. "Just weird."

"I know." Setting her bowl aside, she pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, like she'd done that second day in the cell. _Like two little eggs placed side-by-side. _"I knew it would be weird, at first. But you'll get used to it. And it'll be good for you, I think – good to start living like this, like people do in the real world. To get used to sleeping in a bed, eating at a table. Getting up and getting dressed every day." She turned her head to look at me, eyes lake-still. Didn't go on until I met them. "I know you. I didn't before, not really, but I do now. And I know that you're too brave, and too smart, and too strong to go on living like a rat—to waste everything you have, everything you _are_ rotting in that cell. Maybe you think you come from the dirt, but you can't stay there forever. I'm not going to let you."

I didn't say anything. There was nothing I_ could _say to that. I just swallowed the sand in my throat, and dropped my eyes – played with the peas and my chopsticks, pushing them around, squishing them into pulp. Nobody spoke for ages. "Are you still going to come?" I said at last, to my own surprise. "Every day?"

"Of course I am." She grinned. "You can't get rid of me."


	11. Azula Takes a Bath

Oh, we are having some cute moments now, aren't we? You can't begrudge me a little fluff. Plus, this is fluff with a point, which maybe means it's not fluff at all but I digress – anyway, though it hasn't really been touched on, our darling heroine's been in a fairly icky state up until now. Much as I'd love to imagine her chilling in that cell all made up and well-groomed, the asylum's not exactly a salon. But from this point on, we have the pleasure of picturing her much prettier, even if she is sans lipstick for now—and I really never understood those people, the ones who saw her in "The Awakening" and were all "OMG SHE LOOKS SO MUCH BETTER WITHOUT HER MAKEUP." I love Azula with lipstick. She's not herself without it.

Then again, in the context of this story, she's not herself at all. Oh, well.

**11. Azula Takes a Bath**

The next morning, after one of the shadow-people brought breakfast – I grinned at her, because I couldn't resist, and I swear she went so pale I thought she'd faint – Katara came to get me. She wouldn't say what we were doing. I just followed her down the hall, past the last of the numbered rooms, to a new set of doors – wooden, like all the others, but without a lock. When she opened them, I realized they were sliding doors.

Inside, it was warm. The whole room was warm, full of steam; it hung in the air and streaked the tiles, cool beneath my feet. Blinking the mist from my eyes, I saw its source: a big, round tub of hot water, sitting in the center of the room.

"What are you waiting for?" She gestured to the tub. "Get in."

"Excuse me?"

Actually, it wasn't even the idea that I didn't like, so much as being given commands. More and more now, I was finding that I quite despised being ordered around, and couldn't help but bite back when I was. "Look, I'm sorry," she said in response, rolling her eyes, "but you need it. You've been in that cell _forever_, and I know they were hosing you down now and then but honestly, if they weren't even taking off the jacket, they couldn't have done that great a job. Bottom line is, you're dirty, your hair's a mess, and you don't exactly smell like a bed of roses. So can the sass and just get in the tub, okay?"

_As if I even care what you think, _I felt like sneering back at her, just for the sake of being difficult, but I didn't. The more I thought about it, the better a bath sounded. "Well, don't _look_," I chose to say instead, grudgingly, as I moved to pull my shift over my head.

"I'm _not_! You think I want to see _that_?"

I sniffed. "I don't know how you are."

"Well, however I am, it's _not_ like that!"

"Good!"

"Fine!"

So she turned her head and I stripped off the shift, dropping it on the floor. There was a little stool beside the tub, to make it easier to reach, and I climbed first onto it and then into the water—lowered myself in slow, since it was hot. Not that I was complaining. My sponge-baths had been lukewarm on the best of days, so it felt good sinking into the hot water, inch by inch until it was just my eyes and nose above the surface. Until I was immersed, warm all over, and suddenly, strangely calm; I could feel my skin tingle, in pleasant sourceless flutters, but other than that I didn't move. Didn't need to. I could've stayed like that forever, eyes closed, breathing in steam.

But Katara wouldn't have it. A minute or so after I'd settled, an unceremonious _plunk_ ended the silence, and spattered my face with warm water. I opened my eyes to see a sponge floating in the tub. "Hold out your hand," she demanded. I wrinkled my nose. "Oh, all right. Hold out your hand, _please_."

I was amenable to that. When I obeyed, she tipped a glass bottle over my palm, pouring a pool of something pink into it – some lucent liquid, presumably soap. It smelled like lavender. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"You mean you don't know?"

"Of course I know!" I snapped, frowning. "I just meant…do you have to _stand_ there the whole time?"

"Actually, I do." With a shrug, she kicked the stool over to a corner, the one behind the tub. After that I couldn't see her, but I heard her plop down on it, and say matter-of-factly, "I had to do a lot of sweet-talking to get the staff to let me move you, and even then it didn't come without conditions. One of which is, when you leave that room, you leave with me – and you stay with me. No exceptions."

Well. I couldn't really fault her for that. I mean, I could have, but only to be contrary, and I would rather enjoy my bath than argue with her—so, suitably shielded by the water, I lathered up the sponge and got to work. And it _was_ work, too. I didn't want to admit it, but she'd been right; for the first time, I noticed the film the cell had left on me, a layer of grime that clung to my skin like scales. I realized how far from thorough sponge-bathing was, especially when it left out everything northward. Most of all, I remembered how _nice_ it felt to be clean, nothing gritty or sticky, smelling like flowers instead of mold. Instead of decay, instead of darkness, the things that crawled between the bricks and died. The dust of what seemed a thousand years.

When I was done scouring myself, I wrung the sponge out, then tossed it to the tiles. She snorted behind me. And then I heard her shove the stool aside, and _then_—then the water rippled, like I'd seen hers do so many times. Out of nowhere, a great glimmering bubble rose from the tub – made up of notably _clean_ water, as whatever she did seemed to winnow it – and burst into a shower over my head. Leaving me, quite obviously, soaked.

I made a noise like an indignant steam whistle, halfway between a squeak and a growl. She laughed. "What was _that_ for?"

"Oh, calm down. It's not like you weren't already wet." I jerked around to look at her and saw her uncap another bottle, this one full of something with the color of honey and the scent of oranges. "Besides, your hair has to be wet before we wash it. Don't you know that?"

I cocked an eyebrow. "_We_?"

"Okay, _I_. Do you mind?" I didn't. Maybe I should have, but I didn't; for whatever reason, the thought seemed almost natural. Like it was normal to have other people wash your hair. So I just shrugged, and turned around. "I thought it'd be easier this way," she added. "Plus, I need something to do."

And it was a job worth doing. Like she'd said, my hair was a mess—not a mess, even, but a _disaster_, a greasy nest of knots and snarls. I could feel them, as she pushed her fingers through the worst of it. First there was the shampoo, which felt good despite the tangles, since she wasn't pulling at them so much as working up a lot of suds. Then came another rinse – "rinse" meaning another globe of water dropped on my head – and some kind of oil, something creamy, different from the shampoo but still smelling like oranges. That she had to smooth into each mat, before she went at it with a comb. Which was of, course, an ordeal; neglect had left my hair a thatch, and there was just no way to be gentle yanking those coils loose. There was a lot of pulling, a lot of jerking, not to mention lots of grit teeth on my end. And by the time she finished, I thought I'd lost all feeling in my scalp.

But eventually, she _did_ finish, and the pain was worth it. When she'd unraveled the last knot, she slicked my hair with more oil. This time, the comb slid through slow and easy, and I sank down in the tub – shut my eyes and slackened my shoulders, tight from bracing. Let the heat unwind me again. There were few things nicer, I thought, than hot water. Hot water and steam, and the scent of oranges, and the comb carding gently through my hair; once, a lock came loose and fell over my shoulder, floating on the water's skin. I'd never seen my hair look like that. So sleek, and so silky—shining like molten metal.

One more rinse, and my time in the tub appeared to be over; Katara nodded to a bench by the door. "There's a towel over there for you, and a new set of clothes. I figure that dress is about as gross as you were."

"New clothes?" I blinked over at the bench. "So we don't have to sew anymore?"

"Not if you don't want to. And I guess—well, you wouldn't, would you?" She shook her head, a knowing chuckle in her throat. "It's a peasant hobby, anyway."

She turned her head, so I could climb out of the tub. I shook my hair out, rubbed myself dry with the towel, then discarded it to inspect the pile of clothes: a set of underthings, not very interesting, along with a tunic and pants. The tunic was long, loose, maybe made out of cotton. Embroidered all down the front. It was red, like the pants, but a different shade – sort of scarlet, while the pants were the color of wine. Red was a good color. Familiar. If I had to wear something, I thought as I got dressed, it might as well be red; it was prettier than white, and better than blue.

When I was decent, I cleared my throat and she turned around. There was no mirror in the room – I didn't think I'd have looked in it anyway – and it's not as if I cared how I looked, but I guess I still wondered what she thought. If this whole thing had been worth the trouble. I spread my arms out from my sides, palms open, as if to say _so?_—a gesture that still felt new to me.

"Much better." She paused a moment to take me in, a musing half-smile on her lips. I saw her eyes flick past the pants, past the tunic, up to my hair where it hung like a damp veil over my shoulders. Then, they reached my face. "You look nice," she said, softer than before. "Pretty."

_Like it even matters, _I wanted to say. But instead I just shrugged, and followed her out.


	12. Azula Listens

Demented Noodles: I admire your dedication to commenting. =P Thanks for all the support. But I think you're confused about the doors and windows – I said the blue room (AKA the throne room, for anyone who hasn't figured it out) from Azula's dream didn't have any, not that her cell didn't have any. When she wakes up from the dream and sees the girl in armor, she's back in her cell, and as I believe was first mentioned in Chapter Three, her cell does have a window.

As I recall, more than a few people have mentioned wanting to see Zuko et al. show up at some point. And I had hoped to sneak Zuko into this story, both because I love him as much as I love Azula and because I thought he might be a useful expository tool. I wanted him to show up at the asylum, so that, either through eavesdropping or direct confrontation, Azula could learn what I decided to have Katara tell her in this chapter. But I figured Katara wouldn't be stupid enough to engage in an argument with Zuko right outside of Azula's door, and I also figured Azula wouldn't be dense enough to look her only sibling – not _just_ her only sibling, but a sibling with an _exceedingly _noticeable and presumably memorable facial deformity – in the eyes and have no idea who he was. She'd have to at least be _bothered, _and that just wasn't something I thought would fit into the story. Thus, Azula finds out about the politics of her situation secondhand.

**12. Azula Listens**

"Hey."

She tossed out her standard greeting. Pulled out a chair and sat down. But something was different this time, something was _wrong_ – I could see it on her face. "Hey," I said warily, from my seat across the table. "What's up?"

"Not much." She made an attempt at a smile, spreading thin and weak over her lips. Her voice was weary, sort of hoarse, and the blue in her eyes had dulled to grey; for a minute, I thought she was sick. Or she hadn't slept. But there was worry on her face, too, etched there as with a pick – worry and something like anger, brewing resentment, the signs of patience stretched thin. This wasn't a missed night's sleep. Something was bothering her. "How are you?"

"I'm fine." I cocked my head at her, walking an odd edge between unease and awe. Not that I was _enjoying_ it, but—I had to admit, the whole idea _was_ kind of fascinating. I'd never seen her less than cheerful before. "What's wrong with you?"

She waved a hand, brushing the question off. "Oh, nothing."

"Don't lie to me."

I sent her a frown and she returned it, watered down. As if that half-hearted mirror of my own brow, creased in confusion, would dissuade me from the issue at hand. "Look, I told you _nothing's_ wrong. I just…I didn't have the best morning, okay?"

I considered that. Eyeing her, I sat back in my chair, and steepled my hands in my lap. "Tell me about your morning."

In those words, I could hear her voice, like an echo trailing mine. So could she. At first she just blinked at me, vaguely indignant, as if to say _hey,_ _that's my job; _I just smiled. "Well, I know I've never told you," she said finally, still a little skeptical in tone, "but there's a lot of politics in what we're doing here. People are…pretty invested in it. Some of them think it's good, this arrangement, and some of them don't; either way, everyone's got an opinion." She sighed and laid her head in her hands, elbows on the table. "This morning, I had a little run-in with the latter group. It wasn't fun."

The frown returned. I didn't know _why_ anyone minded her coming here, but I instantly disliked the thought. "So tell them to bug off," I said. "It's none of their business anyway."

She raised her eyebrows. "For one thing, it kind of _is_ – I'm not going to explain it to you, because you wouldn't believe me, but there are at least a few people with a decent stake in what happens to you – and for another, I can't. Maybe you don't realize this, but in the real world, people don't just tell each other to bug off. That's not how it works."

"Why? Because they could stop you?"

"Well…yes, they _could_ stop me, but that's not why. I have to listen to them because they're my friends. You know—they care about me, I care about them? We compromise? Friends?" I rolled my eyes. "Anyway, this morning was a disaster. And the worst part is it was _my_ fault, because I didn't—well, because I was stupid, and I wasn't entirely truthful. I told them I'd keep them updated, back when I first started coming here, and I have been this whole time but—but I didn't tell them when I moved you. I knew they wouldn't like it, so I didn't tell them. I thought it would be easier that way." Her hands slid up to her forehead, like the mere memory of it all made her head ache. "But I was stupid. They found out – I mean come on, of _course_ they found out – and not only did they not like it, but they were _mad_ at me, because I was stupid enough to lie. Mad at me, and…and also scared for me, now that they know. They didn't want me to come back."

I felt my frown narrow into a glare, not at her, but at these nameless, faceless "friends" pushing her to abandon me. The very idea upset me much more than it should have. "That's ridiculous. Why wouldn't they want you to come back?"

"I already told you. They're afraid for me." She looked away. "They've always been…a little concerned about me coming here. But they could handle it, before; they thought I'd be safe so long as we stayed in the cell. So long as you were in the jacket. And obviously when I took it off they weren't happy, and they were scared, and they said they wished I wouldn't but I guess—I don't know, I guess this was the last straw. They say I have too much faith in you. They say I'm asking for trouble, putting us on equal ground. They say I've gotten too close to you, and it's clouding my judgment; they can't believe you've come this far." I heard a long, low breath escape her, another sigh, the sound as tired as she looked. A second later, she glanced at me. "They're afraid for me," she said again. "That's all."

"Well, they're being dumb," I snapped. "What do they think I'm going to _do_, anyway? Haven't you_ told _them I'm not dangerous?"

"Of course I have. I told you, they don't believe it."

That, almost more than the rest, bothered me. It seemed I'd built my whole life around trusting Katara. I didn't see why other people – people she called her _friends_ – wouldn't. "They don't trust you?"

A sort of sad half-smile crossed her face. "No," she said. "It's not me they don't trust."

I almost asked what she meant. But she seemed to shut down for a moment, after that; she didn't speak, just sat and looked at me, weary eyes glazed. Like a dust-cloaked statue. It was strange, but I felt like something broken, watching her watch me. As if she were looking for something, in my face, in my eyes—searching me, and coming up empty. "They all want to visit, you know," she said softly, after a long while. "They keep asking. Some because they need proof we've made progress; some because they just want to see you. They ask me and ask me, and I tell them no every time – I say you're not ready, it's not worth it. I'm not going to risk everything we've worked for just so they can scratch an itch." The smile came back, bittersweet this time, flicking at one corner of her mouth. "Do you think I'm right?"

"Of course I do." There was no thinking involved. Instantly, naturally, the answer was clear; the thought of meeting these people curled my lip. "I'm not an animal. This isn't a zoo. If I thought you were going to be bringing your idiot friends in here to—I don't know, _gawk_ at me—"

She raised a hand. "I get it."

But she was smiling for real now, shaking her head, and I saw the sallow cast to her face brighten. The tenderness returned to her eyes. She seemed to recall something, then, and unbound a canvas bag from her back; I'd hardly even noticed it, given her mood, but all of a sudden she remembered and laid it on the table. "I almost forgot," she said, undoing the flap. "I brought you something. Another project."

Mouth turned skeptically down, I watched her pull a book from the bag, large and square and bound in red. Nothing on its cover or spine. Then there came a long, flat black case, with a glass cover; peering inside, I saw jars of ink cushioned in velvet, glinting in the light. Each was a different color, from red to violet. Last came a mixing-tray, with a brush snapped into its groove – wooden with a fine tip, like the ones we'd used drawing in the cell. "This book is empty," she said, opening it to show me blank pages. "Your job is to fill it for me. Write a story, draw pictures, do both if you want – I don't care what you do, as long as you do something. No numbers, no grids. Other than that, it's your choice, and you have as much time as you need."

"Okay," I said slowly, unsure of how the notion struck me. _Fill it for me. _How could she think I knew anything worth recording? "Why?"

"Because I need some new reading material." I sent her an unamused glance and she grinned at me, deliberately opaque. "Just do it, all right? Trust me."


	13. Azula Lies Awake

**13. Azula Lies Awake**

_I lie in bed and watch the moon, peering in through my window. I can see only a sliver, a flash of white against black, but its light fills my room; moonbeams blanket the bed, the table, twinkle on the case of glass jars. Despite myself, I can't sleep. Katara's voice keeps ringing in my head. _This book is empty. Your job is to fill it for me.

_"You're pathetic."_

_I hear her before I see her – recognize that snide, sharp tone. The girl in armor lurks in the shadows, arms crossed over her chest. Her brow is a deep gash, her lipsticked mouth a hard line; her yellow eyes burn like embers. "I told you she'd make you weak. You think you're so _special _now, you think things are so _good_ – you get out of your cell and suddenly everything's _great, _all because you're not in shackles and you sleep in a bed. You make me sick!" Her hands tighten into fists, braced at her sides. "Look at yourself! You're disgusting! You eat when they tell you, sleep when they tell you, do whatever they tell you to do—you spend your life sitting in this room waiting for _her_, and call it _progress_? Call it _equal ground_? You say you're not an animal? Well, you're eating out of her hands, you're heeling at her word—you might as well be wearing a collar."_

_Pulling the blankets around me, I roll over to face the wall. Her throat swells with a snarl. "Don't you dare turn away from me."_

_Suddenly, her eyes blink into mine, yellow as the fall moon. Her body, swathed in black plates, flickers into the light beside me; her vaporous hands swirl towards my face. "You can lie to yourself, Azula," she whispers into my ear. "But you can't lie to me." _

_I look away. Her nearness freezes me, sweeps over my limbs and leaves them numb. I can't move, so I just look away, eyes fixed on the thin slice of mattress between us; her breath is like ice, but I don't shudder. I can pretend she's not here. That her eyes aren't watching me, unblinking—boring like nails into my skull. _

_Until – out of nowhere – it occurs to me. _Why didn't I think of this before? _"Tell me a story."_

_For once, I've surprised her. When I look up at her, a distrustful frown creases her forehead, her facade rippling like water. "What?"_

_"Tell me a story," I say again, more certain than I've ever been in her presence. "You like telling stories, don't you? Tell me about the princess." I see her eyes glitter, bright with tales yet unspun. The same shade as the yellow ink. "Start at the beginning."_


	14. Azula in the Garden

Aurelia le: It wasn't intentional, actually. =P I didn't even notice it until you did. Good eye.

Also, just as a general author's note, I find it interesting that some people are disappointed with the softening of Azula's character, while others are pissed off "when new Azula acts like old Azula." Makes me wonder what those people will think of the ending, when I get around to writing it.

LOLOL SPARROWKEETS, THIS IS AVATARWORLD REMEMBER

**14. Azula in the Garden**

If I learned one thing about Katara – over the course of so many days, and months, and speaking and not speaking and breaking and picking up – it was that she loved to push boundaries.

I couldn't have been more than a week in that little room, adapting myself as best I could, when she presented a new challenge. Never mind that it was still startling to me, waking up to these four new walls; never mind that the air still smelled different here, and time still passed as through an hourglass, and I was still learning the language of legs and feet. Never mind that I still sometimes stumbled when I walked. Or that I always woke up with my arms wound around me, numb with muscle-memory. One day, she opened my door and announced that we were going outside, not outside as _in outside the room _but outside as in _outside. _Outside the asylum.

Before I knew it, we were in the corridor, hands twined like links of a chain. She didn't say where we were going. Just _outside_, somewhere outside; _outside _could be the mountains, or _outside_ could be the ocean, or _outside _could be the edge of the world. And I guess that was what scared me, still. I trusted Katara more than anything, but there was always that fear—that lingering, throat-thickening fear, like a spear through my stomach, a ghost's cool breath on my neck. The fear that there were some things she didn't know. That the next door would open on a pit.

But then we came to the last door, and she opened it—and I saw that _outside _was no black sea.

Outside was golden. It sounds strange, but that was the first thing I thought; when she opened that door it was all golden, rich and soft and bright. Like nothing I'd ever seen inside. It was the sun, I knew, but the sun was so _different_ through a window – out here it drenched everything, the grass, the trees, the flowers spouting like water from the ground. Out here, the sun was warm, and it was a warmth that settled into my bones. I could feel it under my skin, breathing with me.

She touched my shoulder and I started, blinked my gaze from the sky. When I looked at her, she was golden, too. "So?" she asked, with a smile that said she already knew. "What do you think?"

I made a valiant effort at a shrug. But I couldn't fake apathy, and I couldn't think what to say; I was, for the first time in months, speechless.

I could have stood still all day, watching the sun. But with her hand on my shoulder, she steered me gently forward, into a place she called _the garden; _as it seemed, _the garden_ and _outside_ were the same, because the garden was the only place outside I was allowed to go. It was fenced in by a high, thick stone wall. And that wall was layered in ivy, and climbing jasmine, and the limbs of the trees fanned over it engulfed in leaves. The trees were everywhere. Great tall trees, flanking the path we walked, some with flowers dangling like jewels from their branches—some, too, that were entrenched in flowers, rooted in a thicket of bright bells and petals. The grass in the garden shone like jade, the sky above us kingfisher blue. Everything there seemed brilliant.

So we walked and she spoke and I didn't, still unable, just breathing in the sun and sweet air. She told me about everything, and I had to touch it. The bark on the trees, the dirt of the path, the orange lilies craning towards the sky. It was all new and I had to feel it between my fingers, had to be sure it was real; I must have looked like a fool, but I didn't care. My hands wandered on their own. So it took us awhile to get to the pond, where I realized we'd been heading all along: a still, glasslike half-moon against the back wall, the same color as the sky. When we approached it, she leaned down to cuff the pants under her dress, and I found myself automatically doing the same to my own. Somehow it had become second nature, for me to mirror her.

She sat down on the bank, and dipped her feet into the water; I copied that, too. It felt nice. The pond was warm. It occurred to me that I could've seen myself in its surface, had I leaned over—but for whatever reason, I didn't. "I was thinking maybe we could have our sessions out here," she said after a moment, nodding to the pond. "You know, on nice days."

"Yeah," I answered, a little absently, watching a swallowtail butterfly dart over the pond. "Okay."

Like a drug, the sun sort of made me dizzy, too much so to talk for long. I think she knew it, too, because she didn't speak again – instead, she sat and watched me watch the world, the swallowtail lighting on a lotus, the pond rippling in the breeze. After awhile, I laid back on the grass, and she did the same. Gazing up at the sky, we saw sparrowkeets sail through it singing, tiny green specks against the sun; we saw the trees' leaves flutter, and dandelion seeds blow by, and whether we stayed for a minute or a day I didn't know. Time was lost on me. I didn't even realize it, at first, when the warm breeze became cool wind, or when the clouds spread to blanket the sky. Only when the last sliver of sun disappeared – and I felt the first raindrop on my nose – did I think to raise my head.

"I should've known," Katara said as we sat up, casting a crestfallen gaze at the greying sky. She shook her head and sighed. "Guess we'd better get inside."

"Do we have to?" I asked her, loath to go back inside so soon. The rain was falling faster now, a sheer silver curtain all around us, but it didn't really seem _bad_; I almost enjoyed its gentle patter on my skin. "It's kind of nice."

She sent me an odd glance, close to surprised but not quite. As if she weren't sure whether this was a new side of me, or something she should've expected all along. "Well, I guess we don't _have_ to go," she conceded after a second, then wrinkled her nose. With a sweep of one hand, she produced an invisible canopy, a sort of rain-repellent bubble in the air around her. "At least come over here, though, so you don't get wet."

"What if I _want_ to get wet?"

She clicked her tongue. "Then don't come whining to me when you catch a cold."

I wasn't worried about that. That day, I wasn't worried about anything, watching the rain come down in sheets; without her shield I got soaked, but I didn't care. It actually felt good. Sitting there I saw the pond overflow, the cups of the flowers fill, the path slicken to mud in the rain. I felt it drench my hair and glue my tunic to my skin. And I saw it blacken the sky, eddy the clouds—I could _hear _the shower become a storm, when the first clap of thunder rang. It rolled through those clouds like the roar of a beast, demanding to be heard.

Then came the lightning. The first bolt seemed to split the sky, and when it did Katara bit her lip; over the gale, I heard her say, "This isn't safe. We shouldn't be out in a storm, least of all around so many trees. We've got to go inside."

I wasn't scared. Maybe I should've been, but I wasn't. On the contrary, I was enthralled—far too much so to leave. "Can't we stay for just five minutes?" I appealed, eyes moving only briefly from the storm. "I want to see the lightning."

She looked at me and hesitated, face wrought with indecision. She wasn't one to waffle, most of the time, but in that moment I saw a thousand different thoughts flit through her eyes—fear, naturally, spoiled by sympathy, and a sadness I didn't understand. Bitterness, too. It didn't make a speck of sense – honestly, it was just a storm – but she seemed to read the world into that question. "All right, _fine_," she relented at last, more than reluctant, in a tone that said she'd hate herself later. "Five more minutes. But if we die it's your fault, and I'll never forgive you."

If she'd asked, I couldn't have explained it. I couldn't quite grasp it myself. But there was a certain magic in the lightning, like nothing else I knew – in the way it arced across the sky, blinding silver, shot through with white and blue. The way it moved, flashing, dancing, vanishing into thin air. Its patterns blazed into my eyes, I felt I could trace them by memory, dip a hand in the sun and fling its light like paint; watching it, I forgot everything. The garden, the rain, the seconds melting like snowflakes. The thunder's deafening call. For those five minutes, there was nothing but the lightning, and my heart beating fast for the first time.


	15. Azula and the Swallowtail

Rioshix: There won't be any pairings in this story; for now, Katara and Azula's relationship will remain platonic. I've been toying with the idea of a romantic Azutara sequel, but that remains to be seen.

Shad: It's really not necessary to review each chapter individually. Some people have chosen to, and I'm certainly grateful for it, but I don't expect it at all.

**15. Azula and the Swallowtail**

_This time, the woman and I meet in a dream. Side by side, we sit on the shore of a pond, in a garden ringed by a wall. But it's not the one from the asylum, where I sat with Katara in the rain; this is a different garden, and the sun is a different shade of gold. Here, turtleducks drift on the water's surface, gliding in slow circles around the pond. The woman tosses them bread. _

_I see another swallowtail, wings yellow as her eyes. It flits through the air around her, then comes to light on my hand, a feather-weight I wouldn't feel if I weren't looking. When I roll my wrist, it climbs into my palm, blinking at me with rows of blue spots; it opens its wings once, twice, three times. Without thinking, I close my hand._

_"Oh, no." The woman's voice is soft, but grave. She speaks as though deeply sad. I can hear the _crunch_ of the swallowtail's wings, feel it crushed in my fist; it's nothing but a wet smear now, quivering once then going still. "Why would you do that, Azula?" she asks, her fingers falling over mine, peeling them gently apart. "It isn't nice."_

_She unfolds my hand. And there in my palm, as if by magic, sits the swallowtail—it opens its wings once, twice, three times. Whole and perfect. I _know_ I killed it, I felt it die – but nevertheless here it is, taking flight from my fingers. It sails into the sky, yellow wings flashing, blue spots still winking at me. "There, now," the woman says, watching it go. "Isn't that better?"_

_A frown knits my brow. "Stop talking down to me. I'm not a little girl." _

_She tips her head to one side, lips pursed in puzzlement. "But you _are_, Azula," she says as though it's obvious, and points to the pond. "See for yourself."_

_I bend over the water's mirrored surface, sure the woman is wrong, glaring down in search of my own eyes. But suddenly, the water is stormcloud black—the woman is gone, the garden is gone, the turtleducks in the pond have vanished. I can't see myself. All I can see is lightning, shattering the water's skin. _


	16. Azula and the Clover Chain

Other ghosts? What other ghosts? Silly rabbit, there are no other ghosts. _; Not that I've remembered to talk about, anyway. For our purposes, herself and her mother are the most important ghosts Azula sees, but as she mentions in this chapter they're not the only ones. She's been sitting up at night shooting the breeze with Ozai, Zuko, Ty Lee…the list goes on and on.

**16. Azula and the Clover Chain**

"Do you still see the ghosts?" she asked me one day, during a session by the pond. "Same as always?"

"Yeah." I gave a vague half-shrug, brushing the question off at first. After all, that was a given. Some things had changed, yes, but others hadn't; it had been a month since I'd moved, maybe a little more, and every night the ghosts still came. Usually the woman or the girl. Sometimes, the others came – the man with the beard, or the boy with the scar, or the girl with her hair in a braid – but for the most part, it was the woman and the girl. "Same as always."

"Mm." She made one of her odd musing noises, like she always did when she had a thought brewing. "Can I ask a question?"

"I don't know, can you?"

I could almost hear her roll her eyes. "I'm trying to be serious here, if you don't mind."

"Fine. You _may_ ask a question if you want."

Still, she paused for a moment before she asked, the water's heartbeat soft in my ears. The pond water was warm, I'd found, sun-warm, not like the water from her pouch; there was a different sheen to its bubbles, and a different sound to its pulse. Sheathed in it, her hands gave off a different glow. "A long time ago," she said at last, "you told me two things about the ghosts. When I asked you what they did. You said the girl told you stories, and the woman told you lies." I nodded. "So I was wondering—how do you know they're lies?"

"I just do."

I didn't have to think about it. I didn't even know why she'd ask about it, since it seemed so obvious to me. "Yes, but _how_?"

"_How_? How do you know the sun is the sun? How do you know the stars are the stars?" I let out my breath, twining a hand into the grass. Mindlessly, I pulled a fistful from the earth, and began snapping the blades. "She lies because she lies, Katara. It's in her nature. If you could see her, you'd know."

After that she was quiet again, for awhile. Until I'd shredded the heap of grass in my lap, and reached down to pluck another clump. "Don't pull up the grass," she said suddenly, as if woken from a dream. She flicked one wrist and the water sailed back into the pond, bubbles glinting as they broke its skin; another flick sliced through a nearby patch of clover, and beckoned the tiny white flowers our way. Dancing as though on a breeze, they swirled through the air and dropped themselves into my lap, never once losing my eyes. Not that such things were new to me, at this point – she'd shown me before, how she could command the garden, and explained about the water in all things – but they still amazed me every time. "If you need to keep your hands busy, make a clover chain. We don't want bald spots in the garden." A whisk of her hand replaced the glove. Summarily, she picked up where she'd left off. "So it's an instinct, then. You just…know without knowing. Not because of any specific thing she says."

I felt a furrow carve its way into my forehead, a frown forming without my willing it. I wasn't sure how to say so, but she was missing the point. "Well, yes and no," I said slowly. "I mean, I know without knowing, but—there are specific things, too. Specific things she says that aren't true, and—can't be." A disdainful snort fluttered my hair. "Stupid stuff, you know. Like—she's always saying she loves me."

When she spoke again, her voice had dropped a measure. Become soft, in a sad sort of way. "I don't see what's so stupid about that."

"It's stupid," I answered, with a stab at stifling frustration, "because it's a lie. I told you that before."

"Why does it have to be a lie?"

My teeth nearly bruised my lip. To keep from yelling at her, I bit down on it until the urge faded, until the choler ebbed beneath my skin; I closed my eyes and released my breath, a long, low sigh through my nose. She could be_ infuriating_ sometimes. Harping and harping on these things, like picking at a scab. I'd played along as far as I could, but what did she _want_? What more could I give her? "Because it doesn't make sense," I said when my blood had cooled. "Because she has no reason to love me. She doesn't even know me. And even if she did, I haven't done anything worth loving."

To keep calm, I did as she'd suggested, knotting the stems of the clover together. A week or so ago, she'd shown me how to string a chain, and we'd spent the whole day making them; it was addictive, and in this case, soothing. "What do you mean, 'anything worth loving'?" she asked, words still heavy with that strange sadness. "Do you have to _do_ something to be loved?"

"Of course you do. You have to earn it." I began pulling the stems tighter, stopping just before they broke. "People don't just show up in places like this, looking to love people like me. Nobody's on your side just _because._ Nobody loves you just _because._ You have to be worth it, you—you have to _deserve_ it, you have to _do_ something other than sit around and make clover chains all day. It's just like everything else. If you want to make money, you have to earn it. If you want to win a prize, you have to earn it. And if you want someone to love you—you have to earn that, too."

_How you do know? _I felt sure she would ask. And I would say, _how do you know the sun is the sun? How do you know the stars are the stars? _"What about me?" she ventured instead, catching me off guard. "Didn't I just…show up here?"

I looped a new link. "Not just _because_."

"Then why?"

"You told me yourself. You—you like to help people. Not me _specifically_, just…people."

She answered that with a surprising touch of indignation. "If I just want to help people, why am I still here? Surely there's an easier way to do it_._ If I just want to help _people,_ and I don't actually care who, why have I taken _months_ out of my life to help _you_? Why do I keep coming back, day after day? Why am I here, _days_ away from my home, from my family—why would I do _any_ of this, for something as _vague_ as 'helping people'?"

_She cares for you, Azula. _When she talked like that, I could hear the woman's voice in my head, that slimy lying whisper worming its way into my ear. I could almost see her yellow eyes, gleaming in the sun on the pond. _She wants to know you._ "I don't know!" I snapped. "Because you just do! Maybe—maybe it's because you're too proud to give up on me, to go home and tell your friends you failed. Maybe you've already sunk too much time into this, and too much effort, and now that you've wasted all that you think—you think you might as well finish it, even though it was stupid to start. Maybe you're just trying to prove a point."

All the time, I worked on the clover chain, knotting stem after stem like a machine. I kept my eyes in my lap. And for what seemed like years, she didn't speak, didn't tell me I was wrong—not that I _wanted_ her to, or anything. I knew what the truth was. I didn't need her sympathy, her worthless honeyed lies; I took no comfort in her sigh. When she dismissed the water, I didn't look up. When she stood, and seconds later sunk to her knees beside me, I set my jaw. Even when she reached out to touch me, fingers brushing my chin – as if to turn my head herself, to _make_ me look at her – I only stiffened, and jerked away.

"Or maybe it's because I actually like you," she said anyway. "You, _specifically_."

"But _why_?"

The words caught in my throat, like a hard slick pebble I couldn't swallow. When I looked up – if only to keep my eyes from glazing – I saw her smile. "Maybe there's not a _why_," she said gently. "Maybe I just do."


	17. Azula Learns a Form

I told myself I wasn't going to do author's notes like crazy, this time around. ._. I really did.

1) Actually, it's…_really_ not necessary to review each chapter individually, if you don't want to. It's great that you're so passionate about it, Demented Noodles, and of course I'm flattered, but I don't need chapter-by-chapter reviews from every single person reading this to keep me motivated. ;) Not that I wouldn't accept it. It's just that…you know, people have lives.

2) Rioshix & Hazelstar (and anyone else who was hoping for Azutara): Don't give up hope just yet. =P Like I said, it won't happen in this story, but...well, there's your incentive to hang on for a sequel.

3) IILustTII: I'm sure "undeining" was a typo, but I've been trying to puzzle it out, and I'd really like to know what you meant to write there. o.o

4) [shameless self-pimping] I've posted a few psuedo-illustrations for this story on DA recently, and though I can't link them directly (I swear to God, I will never understand the reasoning behind that policy) here, you can see the links on my profile if you're interested. [/shameless self-pimping]

5) In this chapter, Azula reflects your decidedly uncoordinated author's frustrations with tai chi, which she took as a gym course this past semester. And which, as any respectable Avatard would know, is the martial art on which waterbending is based. Since, as Katara says, the movements associated with waterbending don't come naturally to Azula – and since, as anyone who's watched me in class would say, tai chi absolutely does not come naturally to me – I figured she and I could commiserate a bit.

17. **Azula Learns a Form**

Sometimes, I'd bring the book outside, on the days when we didn't have a session. She'd busy herself with something else, somewhere in the garden, and I'd sit against a tree and work; it was slow going, but it felt good. Good to see the pages fill one at a time, bit by bit. Good to have somewhere to set my sights. Good, even, to take some ownership of this story, the one the ghost-girl had whispered for so long. This time, _I_ was the one who would tell it. This time, I was in charge.

Night by night, I had her retell it, and day by day I wrote it down. When I ran out of things to write, I drew pictures. With the colored ink I could make line-drawings, to go along with the words – drawings of the princess and the world around her, black for her armor, red for her palace. Swallowtail yellow for her eyes. On one particular day, I sat under a tree near a clearing, just within Katara's sight – she was practicing some sort of kata, I think – and dipped the brush into the orange ink, tapping it off on the tray. Carefully, I applied a streak in the princess's open hand, on the page where she first pulled fire from the air. The ghost-girl said she had a way with it, like Katara did with water. So I made it orange, orange for fire, like the candles and lanterns I'd seen; it made sense, at first.

But then it felt wrong. I didn't know why, but I knew it did, so before the ink dried I smudged it off with one finger. Capping the orange ink, I examined the case for something more suitable, maybe yellow, or red – glanced at them all doubtfully, still not satisfied, until I came to the conclusion of blue. Which was stupid, of course. Blue was a bad color, and what's more, it wasn't the color of fire. But it felt _right_, in the strangest way, and I couldn't make myself ignore it; chalking it up to creative license, I swirled the brush in blue ink and painted a new flame. Instantly, the drawing came together. As if that were a natural thing.

"Hey." Looking up from the page, I saw Katara standing over me, flush with midday sun. She craned her head to see my work. "How's it going?"

I shut the book. "None of your business, that's how," I informed her. "You can see it when it's done. Not before."

"All right, fine. Don't show me. That's not what I wanted, anyway." She nodded to the supplies strewn over the grass around me, the case with the ink jars, the tray. The brush in its glass of water, bleeding whorls of blue ink. "Why don't you clean this stuff up and come join me? It's too nice a day to spend in the shade. And besides," she added, stretching her arms above her head, "there's something I want to show you."

When I stepped out into the clearing – having shoved most of my makeshift workshop aside, rather than actually cleaning it up – she was waiting for me, hands on her hips. "Okay," I said dubiously. "I'm here. What are we doing?"

"Well, I've been thinking." She paused and tipped her head to one side, looking me over in the light. "You lost a lot of weight in that cell. Not that I blame you – rice and cabbage isn't exactly a great diet – but you did. Of course, now that you're feeding yourself and eating right, you'll gain it back – which is why we need to get you moving again." I frowned, followed her eyes as she scanned me. What did she mean, _again_? "I can show you a few basic forms. Nothing too exciting, mostly just stretches and warm-ups. It'll be better that way, actually, since I don't want to take you too far from your usual drills; I'm just thinking it'll be easier to get back to them, when you're ready, if you've been getting some kind of regular workout. Even if it's not what you're used to."

_Your usual drills _meant nothing to me, naturally – knowing what a kata was didn't mean I recalled doing them – but I didn't let it bother me. It was a habit with her, referencing things I'd never done, or else didn't remember doing. To preserve what sanity I had, I'd learned to ignore it. "Fine."

I didn't have to say more than that. There in the clearing, in a patch of warm summer sun, I stood beside her and did as she did; when she reached for the sky, I reached for the sky. When her palms touched the ground, my palms touched the ground. Everything she did I mirrored, from the swell of her breath to the fan of her fingers, and for the most part it was easy. We did simple stretches, like she'd said. Sinking down to the grass, rising up towards the sun, rolling the kinks from necks and wrists—it actually felt good, to my surprise. Like greasing an old wheel. She taught me to lace my fingers together and stretch my arms out behind me, until I felt my shoulder blades meet – she had me touch my toes and unfold slowly, like a blooming flower, until my hair tumbled down my back. There was a sense of unbinding in all of it, of setting down a weight I didn't know I'd carried. Of loosening invisible stays.

Of course, when she'd said _it's not what you're used to_, it hadn't made sense. I'd put it out of my mind. But as the day went on, and the sun climbed in the sky, and we moved from deep breathing and stretches to the beginning of a form, I realized she'd been right. It didn't feel natural to me. Like the orange flame, it didn't seem _right_, too slow and too gentle for my taste – she'd extend her hand and draw in her fingers, swirling them one by one into her palm, while my reflex was to make a fist and strike. She'd let her arms glide out before her, dip and sway as if summoning something from the air, and I'd lose patience halfway through. I wanted everything to go faster, to hit harder, to feel like iron instead of silk. My instincts demanded nothing less. But she didn't have those instincts, and again and again, she'd say _you need to relax; _she'd tell me _these moves are for balance, not combat. The idea is to center yourself. To flow like water, like a river through its bed. _

That became especially hard in the course of one move, something like a bird spreading its wings. First she showed me, and it looked simple enough; then, she had me try. I might as well have tried to sprout wings myself. I can't say why, but it was _impossible_, and try as I might there was a rhythm to it I just couldn't grasp – a grace and fluency that eluded me every time. I was always too stiff with it, too aggressive. If I wasn't mad already, that move was sure to drive me there.

"I hate this!" I snapped at last, refusing to try again. "It's impossible. I am _not _going to stand here all day and—_humiliate _myself—just because you tell me."

She stopped and blinked at me, head cocked in confusion. For some reason, she looked genuinely surprised. "What do you mean, humiliate yourself? I thought you were doing fine. Great, actually, seeing as this stuff doesn't come naturally to you."

I frowned. "Yeah, right. I've been doing this one move for _ages_, and it's still not perfect."

"Who said it had to be perfect?"

"I did." I folded my arms over my chest, lifting my chin. "Otherwise, why bother doing it?"

"I don't know, maybe because it's good for you? Because you need the exercise? Because, at least for awhile there, I _know_ you were enjoying it?" She cast her gaze over the garden around us, sweeping one arm out to follow it. "Look around. Who's going to care if you're not perfect – or for that matter, if you are? The trees don't care. The birds don't care. I don't particularly care, either. So quit stressing, okay?"

She left no room for a retort. Merely breezed on to the next move, the next step in the form; she turned her back and took her stance and without asking, I knew I was meant to do the same. I considered being outraged. Thought about arguing still, demanding that she listen – I thought about stalking back to the tree, and planting myself beneath it. I could've opened the book, and taken up the brush, and perfected that streak of blue fire until the sun set. I could've been all kinds of contrary. But in the end I only stood there a moment, arms crossed and brow knit—I sighed, so loud and so hard it made my bangs flutter, but in the end I threw up my hands. In the end, they found themselves following hers again, on their slow coast through the air.

"Besides," she added after awhile, reaching again for the sky, "even if you _were_ perfect, I doubt it'd make you happy." She swept a palm over the sun, as if she could wipe it away. "Sometimes it's lonely at the top."


	18. Azula and the Library

**18. Azula and the Library**

One day I said to her, _I want to see cities. I want to see mountains, _I said, _and deserts and castles and seas. I want to see icebergs and craters. Not that I don't know what they look like _– I did know, though I wasn't sure how – _but I'm working on my book, and I need references. _

So we went to the library. I didn't even know the asylum _had_ a library. I didn't know why they'd need one, but when I asked her, she said most of the staff lived there like I did; they needed people on hand all the time, to mind the inmates or patients or whatever it was they called us, so they furnished staff quarters and washrooms and kitchens. And apparently, libraries. One library, at least, a great round tower-room with walls papered in shelves. The ceiling was high, sun pouring in through a glass dome, and on everything lay a thin film of dust – dust on the tabletops, dust on the velvet chairs. Dust on the spine of every book.

"So…this is the staff library?" I asked her, pulling a book from the nearest shelf. It was tattered, dog-eared, and my fingers left prints in the dust; when I blew it away, I nearly choked. "Ugh. I take it the staff isn't well-read."

"No kidding," she said wryly. "I guess this is why they didn't mind us coming here." She sighed and surveyed the room, eyes flicking from one shelf to the next. They were as shabby as everything else, carved from wood that had warped and faded over time, but the plaques hung above them still shone. "Anyway, everything's labeled, so you can pretty much just go to town. We probably shouldn't take anything, but if you want to write something down…" Her voice trailed off as she approached a table, where there sat a sheaf of paper and a jar of ink. First she uncapped it, then sniffed it, then wrinkled her nose and turned it over; nothing but powder came out. "I brought my own."

I went first to the art section, stuffed with broad, flat tablets bound in twine. Made up mostly of thick paper and canvas, the art books were full of cities and mountains and icebergs, some in charcoal, some in black ink, some in oil paint. I liked those the best. The paintings were in color, after all, and the sea in peacock-blue paint was brighter than the sea in my mind; so too were the forests in emerald green, the volcanoes spouting brilliant jets of fire. Not only that, but on some pages there were dragons, and eagles and tigers, and people swathed in silk and jewels. Silver castles with spires a mile high.

Higher up there were long rows of scrolls, etched ends glistening in the sun. With the help of a wheeled metal ladder I could reach them, and slide them out one by one; unfurled, they revealed tidal waves, cherry blossoms, mandalas edged in gold foil. I found one with sketches of a figure, in six neat lines, performing a kata like hers. Others had drawings of spirits, roaming the swamps of their realm, wearing the skins of serpents and wolves. I spent a long time on that ladder, poring over the scrolls—that is, until she started bugging me to come down. _That thing is a deathtrap, _she told me, from the table where she'd set up camp. _It's a million years old. And if it breaks and you fall, I'm not going to feel bad. _

So I climbed down and wandered over to the history section. Since my ties to the world were frayed at best, the books there read like fairy tales, tapestries of far-off lands and age-old wars. I leafed through one about the great cities of the Earth Kingdom, another on the invention and progression of warships; in a cobwebbed corner, I found pamphlets of propaganda, alongside archived prints of old Wanted posters. It was all fascinating, though I'd never have guessed so, and I had just pulled out another book – titled _Contemporary History of the Fire Nation_, though given the dust I don't know how 'contemporary' it could've been – when I heard her call for me.

"Hey!" she exclaimed, that perhaps being the best way to summon a nameless person. "Come here a second, will you? I want you to see something."

I approached the table to find a book open on it, large and leatherbound. It had pictures in it, like the art books, but—pictures laid out on grids. _Maps_. "It's an atlas."

"Yeah." She turned the page to a map that spanned the centerfold. "You're always saying you're not sure the world is real? Well here it is, ocean to ocean – north to south pole." She nodded towards the chair beside her, and like a good little mental patient, I sat. "I can't take you to see it all, but this is the next best thing."

I tipped my head and stared down at the map, as much a fairy tale as the books. Looking at it, all I saw were lines and colors. I knew some signified land, and others water, and I could read the labels defining them – but what did they mean to me? "Okay," I said skeptically, casting her a sidelong glance. "Where are we?"

"Hm?"

"Show me where we are, right now. On the map."

She placed her finger on the land mass inked in red, just slightly south of its center. "We're in the Fire Nation. More specifically, we're on the mainland, not very far from the capital."

"That's where the asylum is?"

"Basically." Flipping forward a few pages, she showed me a map that focused on the Fire Nation, with details that must've been inked with a single hair. There were hundreds of fine lines, denoting cities and roads, and she rested her fingertip first on the outline of a caldera; gold leaf marked it as the capital. Slowly, she drew her finger downwards, over maybe an inch of the map. "It's too small to see here," she said, tapping an intersection of lines, "and that's probably deliberate, since it's not supposed to be easy to find. You know, discretion and all. But I think this is about where we are."

I nodded and pursed my lips, thinking. I recalled what she'd said in the garden that day, weeks ago. _Days away from my home. _"Where do you live?"

"Right now? Or where did I grow up?"

"Where's your home? You said you were _days_ away from it, remember? So where is it?"

She looked surprised, for a moment. Maybe that I remembered. Maybe that I even cared. But she went back to the big map, and this time she pointed to the lowest of the land masses – one of the two painted blue. "Here. I live in the Southern Water Tribe."

"Oh." It struck me as strange that I hadn't known that, though I'm not sure why. It felt like something I should've asked. "Do you miss it?"

Again, she sent me a bemused glance, almost a smile but not quite. "A little. But my friends are here – at least, they're here most of the time – and besides, I'm used to being away from home. I've travelled a lot before."

"Really?" She nodded. "Did you like it?"

"Well, it had ups and downs. At any rate, it wasn't like we were on vacation; when we were on the road, it was because we had to be." All the while, her eyes turned me over like a puzzle piece, as though trying to decide where I fit. "Why the sudden interest?"

I shrugged. "No reason." Planting my elbows on the table, I folded my arms and made a pillow of them, chin nestled in the junction of my wrists. They were bony still, like they'd been that first day outside the straitjacket, but getting better by the day. Balanced meals had helped me gain weight. Following her forms had made me strong. Writing and drawing had made my hands dexterous, no longer limp like puppet-limbs. "I just—wonder if you're bored of this yet. If you'd rather be home."

I didn't look at her, but I knew she was smiling. I could hear it, warm and soft like sunshine. "Bored of this?" she said. "Bored of you? Never. There's nowhere in the world I'd rather be." A minute later, she pushed the open atlas close to me, until her south pole was right under my nose. "How about you?" she asked, still with a smile in her voice. "If you could go anywhere in the world right now – anywhere on this map – where would it be?"

_Anywhere in the world. _I'd never considered it before. "I don't know." I closed my eyes to the map, just lines and colors. In my head, I heard the ripple of the pond, felt it swallowing my feet; I tried to imagine the sea. "I'd like to see the ocean, I guess. Just to be sure it's there."

"That sounds nice." The atlas let out a soft _thump_ as she closed it, dust billowing through the air. "We'll go see the ocean one day. You and me."

"Promise?"

"Promise."


	19. Azula Tells Her Story

*sigh* Loooot of people reading and not reviewing. Just saying, I'm spending an awful lot of time writing this – so if you're reading and enjoying it, is it so much to ask to take a minute of yours?

And if you happen to have more than a minute…well. ._. As I said before, I know people have lives, and I'm grateful for every "great job" or "keep it up." But the reviews I really look forward to getting are the ones that mention details, specific things you liked about that chapter and _why _you liked them – or even things you _didn't_ like, and why that was. I do sometimes wonder if anyone out there is giving these chapters as much thought as I am. ;)

**19. Azula Tells Her Story**

"It's finished."

When she arrived I was perched on the bed, legs folded, the book in my lap. Without preamble I stood, and presented it to her. "Great!" she said brightly. "Are you going to read it?"

"Read it? What do you mean, read it?"

"Read it to me. Out loud."

I frowned. "Why would I? You can read it yourself."

"Yeah, but it's your story; I want to hear it in your voice." She grinned and took me by the hand, pulling me into the hall. "Come on. We'll read it in the garden. It'll be fun."

In the garden, we sat side by side against the wall, nestled in a gap between the lilacs. It was a warm day, even in the burgeoning fall; the grass was carpeted in dying flowers, and the lilac bushes bore no bloom, but the garden still welcomed us with open arms. Though the breeze was cooler and the days were shorter – though the sunlight wasn't golden now, more of a pale pearly white – there was no real winter in the Fire Nation. It would never get cold enough to snow. Some trees wouldn't even shed their leaves. And if we chose, we could come here year-round.

Settling back into the ivy – a vine that never flowered nor withered, and still blanketed the garden wall – Katara threw me an expectant glance, one corner of her mouth cocked in a smile. "Any time."

I looked down at the book, suddenly very heavy in my lap. "All right, fine," I conceded, more than a little grudging, still not wild about this idea. _I want to hear it in your voice, _she'd said. It was hard enough believing she wanted to hear it at all. "I'll read it out loud. But no interrupting, okay? No questions, or—observations, or anything like that. Not until the end."

"Of course."

I let out my breath. For awhile – just a minute, though it felt like more – I stared down at the cover of the book, still plain red leather edged in gold. I'd never given it a title. "This is the story the ghost-girl tells," I began. "The girl in armor.

"Once, a long time from now – a long way from here – there was a palace by the sea. In the palace lived a king and a queen. They ruled over a vast empire, spanning their shores and beyond, and helmed the crusade to broaden its reach. But, as with any kingdom, theirs could not endure without an heir – so the queen bore her husband two children, a daughter and a son. A princess and a prince. The first child, the prince, soon proved to be worthless; born beneath an unlucky star, he was weak of both body and mind, and unfit to ascend the throne. When the king realized this, he cast him out.

"Fortunately, his sister was different. The princess was clever and beautiful, with a natural gift for combat; she could produce flame with her bare hands, and pull lightning from the air. She was the kingdom's crown jewel. Prized by the king and feared by the queen, she had a presence in the court from an early age, her peers and elders alike eager to curry favor with her. Her talent and wit made her invincible. So it was clear that, when an important task arose – when news came that the prince, along with his traitorous uncle, had become even more of a disgrace in exile – the king should give it to her. He said to her, _you will take the finest ship in the navy, and it will be yours. You will find your brother and your uncle and apprehend them, by whatever means necessary. You will bring them home in chains. Do this and you shall be much honored in this court, and you shall know much glory; do this and you will prove your loyalty not just to me, but to this kingdom. _

"So the princess set out to capture the traitors. Soon enough, though, she surmised that there was an even greater prize to be to won, and an even greater threat to crush – a small but powerful cell of rebels, out for her father's blood. Led by a legendary demigod called the Avatar, their band crossed paths with the princess early in her hunt, and from then on she and her subordinates – friends from her school days, trained in the arts of battle – sought their heads as well. It was not an easy task. For months, the princess scoured the land, leaving no stone unturned. For months, her targets eluded her. Until she realized that there was a better way.

"The princess and her minions easily overcame a band of warriors, and appropriated their uniforms. Masquerading as the enemy, they infiltrated the capital city of the largest nation in the world – the one most opposed to the king's reign. An artful actress, the princess won the trust of the city's ruling regime, and summarily brought it down from the inside. In a single swipe, she did what her country's brightest minds and strongest armies had failed to do for years. Seizing control of the city's police force, she captured the traitors, trapped the rebels, and – seeing a chance for glory beyond glory, beyond what her father had promised – slayed the Avatar.

"It was her most spectacular victory. With the conquest of the city under her belt, the princess returned home. Once there, she shrewdly thought to allow her brother the glory of dispatching the Avatar; with a cunning that bordered on clairvoyance, she deduced that the job was perhaps not finished after all, and decided that the prince's return to the palace was worth a shield in case her suspicions were correct. Sure enough, her ploy proved its merit in short order. While undercover in the enemy city, the princess had learned of the rebels' plan to stage an invasion into her kingdom—and though her brilliance saved her nation from defeat, the Avatar lead the army. Deadly force had not been enough.

"After this she redoubled her efforts, to rid the world of him for once and for all. The rebels were still after her father, and the prince had yet again defected, and the challenge before her was great. She was more than prepared for it, stronger and smarter than ever, but circumstances conspired against her; when she least expected it, the princess's minions betrayed her. Of course, the loss meant nothing. They had not made her what she was, and without them she was no less clever, no less beautiful. She was in fact better off that way, as a lack of company is preferable to that which is poisonous. Their treachery cost her no sleep.

"At length the day came when her father's crusade was to be ended. On the auspicious dawn of a comet – one that made those of his kind more powerful, by adding strength to the fire they produced – the king set out with a fleet of airships, to complete his conquest of the world. This time, he said to the princess, _you will remain here, and protect our kingdom; in my absence you must swear to defend it, lest it fall to the rebels. You will sit on my throne and command my guard. Do this and you shall be much honored in this court, and you shall know know much glory. Do this and when I have the world, you shall have this land. _

"The princess swore. She took the care of her kingdom in her hands. As ever she was strong of will, sharp of mind and sound of body; her guard inept and her minions jailed, she stood alone at the palace gates. And no sooner had her father gone than his fears came to pass. A faction of the rebel band stormed her courtyard, descending on the back of a beast – one a peasant, the other the turncoat prince, demanding the crown the king had promised her. Fearless, the princess rose to the challenge. She more than outmatched her brother and both knew this, before the duel's first strike was thrown. And so in his desperation, in his cowardice the prince bade the peasant help him, sly rat that she was; versed in the lesser arts, she used her skill to trap the princess, and shackle her with chains from her own armory. It was not an honorable victory, nor was it just, but swine care little to what ends their savagery goes. The princess became as a great tree, felled in her own courtyard.

"And so it came to be that her reign was ended, and her bright star ceased to shine. Her glory and her empire stolen by the rebels, she was sentenced to live out her life chained like an animal, in the darkest corner of the highest tower of the prison farthest from her home. Her father was defeated, her kingdom was conquered, and shortly the princess was forgotten; not even her name remained, to echo in some dim corridor. It was as if she had never been."

I closed the book.

I didn't think I'd ever spoken so long. I had to swallow, twice over, to slick my throat; I had to blink the glaze from my eyes. When I looked up, I saw her watching me. "May I ask a question now?"

Her voice was soft. I nodded, sort of numb.

"Who is the princess?"

For a moment, I paused. Just stared at her. Not because I didn't know, just because—because it seemed so _obvious,_ to me. Who told the story? Who wore the armor? Who had the sharp swallowtail eyes, the same shade of yellow as my ink? "The ghost girl," I answered. "The girl in armor. A long time ago—it happened to her."


	20. Azula's Bright Star

**20. Azula's Bright Star**

_"How dare you?" _

_The ghost girl's voice is a razor, slicing through the night. Slick and cold and cruel. I lie in my bed and I can't see her but I hear her, everywhere at once—her voice bleeding from the walls, pooling on the floor, sliding slowly along cracks in the ceiling. Dripping down in strings of hot wax, each drop blistering my skin. _

_"How dare you tell that story?" comes her snarl, the edge of a blade at my throat. "My story? _Our_ story? To that peasant _filth_? You're broken now. Clay in her hands. She's tamed you, weak little girl, _stupid_ little girl—she's got you telling our secrets, giving them out like sweets at a fair. How much is your spirit worth? A copper piece? Two?"_

_I sense her prowling, like a tiger – stalking the room, eyes glowing, tail switching. Striped hide slipping from my sight. I can feel her claws in my neck. "Stupid little girl," she whispers into my ear. "Look what you've become. Where have you gone, clever girl? You can't even read a map. Where have you gone, beautiful girl? You don't even pin up your hair." The words are mocking, their rhythm like a song. "Where is your glory now, Azula? Where is your bright star? Have you died already, Azula? Is this all a dream?"_

_Maybe she's not a tiger. Maybe she's a snake. That could be her sliding over me, thick and heavy, almost liquid; those could be her coils twining my limbs. "Did you tell her," she sneers, "because you think she _likes_ you? Because you want to believe she _cares_?" Her scales are cool on my skin. I think for sure she's a rattlesnake, because I hear the trill of her tail—or maybe she's just laughing. "Azula doesn't want to be forgotten. Azula doesn't want to be alone. Azula will do anything, _anything_ not to fade away, in the darkest corner…" The words turn to molasses in her mouth, her voice a slow, sweet, painful drawl. "Of the highest tower…" I can almost hear her forked tongue flick. "Of a prison at the edge of the world."_

_"Leave me alone."_

_Suddenly, she's an inch from my nose. Her nothingweight comes down a block of ice. She appears on top of me, perched astride my chest, not a tiger nor a snake but somehow worse than both; her yellow eyes gleam like gold coins. "Stupid girl," she hisses. "Don't you get it yet? I'll _never_ leave you. I can't." She cracks a grin laced with vinegar, bitter and sharp. "I'm all you've got."_


	21. Azula and the Mirror

For the record, I agree with Katara (or more accurately, Katara agrees with me). Azula does have gorgeous cheekbones. At least, she does in certain episodes – believe me, I have nothing but love and respect for ATLA and everyone who makes it, but the look of some characters varies wildly from episode to episode. I tend to prefer Azula's look in The Day of Black Sun, aside from her mysteriously and temporarily black hair. And of course in the finale, but that kind of goes without saying.

**21. Azula and the Mirror**

In the morning, I woke damp with cold sweat. The ghost girl was gone, but her song was an ever-present echo; I could hear it all the time. When I peeled back the sheets, wound around me like a cocoon. When I shed my nightgown and pulled on my clothes. When I combed my hair, when I brushed my teeth, when I scrubbed my face over the basin on the bureau—all morning it was as if she were beside me, whispering into my ear. _Where have you gone, clever girl? _came her voice like glass chimes, tinkling in the breeze. _Where have you gone?_

I was always glad when Katara came. I'd stopped trying to pretend otherwise. But that day I was especially glad, because the girl was scared of her; when she opened the door, the voice vanished. "Hey," she said cheerfully, slinging a canvas bag loose from one shoulder. If she seemed a little nervous – if there was a touch of dread in her tone, in the way she looked at me – I didn't notice then. "How are you?"

"Okay." In no mood to discuss my night, I watched as she set the bag down on the table, craning to catch a glimpse of what it held. "What's in there?"

"Well, you'll probably think it's stupid," she said, "but I had an idea." She grinned at me. In both hands, she took the bag and proceeded to empty it all at once, spilling a raft of tubes and jars onto the table—tiny glass ones, in all colors, filled with sparkly dusts and paints. And scads of little combs, and brushes and powder puffs, and jewelled hairpins that glittered in the light. And a heavy enamel hand-mirror, falling with a _clunk_ from the bag. And if at any point she tensed, or hesitated – if she did something, _anything_ that might have been a clue – I was blind to it. "I thought we could do makeovers!"

I snorted. "You were right. That _is_ stupid." Frowning, I watched a jar of blue powder roll towards the table's edge, and only just caught it before it fell. "No offense," I said wryly, "but _why_, exactly, would you think I'd want to play beauty parlor with you?"

"Because it's fun." I raised an eyebrow. "Oh, come on. Don't tell me you've _never_ wanted to do this—be a little girl, for just one day?"

_Weak little girl. Stupid little girl. _After last night, a little girl was the last thing I wanted to be. "I never have."

I set the jar back on the table, and gave it a flick. It rolled back over to her side, a wheel of flashing, spinning blue. "All right, how about this?" she amended. "You do me first. Whatever you want—make me a queen, or make me a clown. Paint whiskers on my cheeks, I don't care. And when you're done, if you still can't _stand _the idea – if you'd honestly rather _die_ than let me near you with a lipstick – we'll stop there. No obligation."

Well. That didn't sound so awful. Still—to keep up appearances—I heaved a sigh. "Okay, _fine_," I said at last, rolling my eyes. "If it's _that_ important to you."

"You're a saint."

But it wasn't bad, honestly. Like she'd said, it was actually fun, even though I never did get around to painting whiskers on her cheeks. Instead, I got absorbed in lining up the jars, in neat rows side by side; first, I grouped them by type, shadow with shadow, lipstick with lipstick, rouge with rouge. Then by color, according to the rainbow. When that was done I stacked the combs on top of each other, and ordered the pins and barrettes, and sorted the pencils into lips and eyes. I resisted the urge to count them all.

From there, I began. And while I didn't make her a clown, I didn't exactly use restraint; there's a time and place for subtlety, I know, but that wasn't it. I was an artist, she was a blank canvas, and besides, it wasn't like she was _going _anywhere. So I rouged her cheeks peony-pink, and painted her lips vermilion. I dusted her eyelids in green. Then a layer of blue, and then more green, and then some shimmery powder—I was going for ocean, at first, but three empty tins later I'd hit the wall at peacock. That was all right, though. I kind of liked it that way. So I pushed blithely ahead, lining her eyes in black, then dipping a brush in paint to darken her lashes. And – after a moment of thought – dotting her cheek with a beauty mark.

As always, most of her hair hung loose, save for the bun at the nape of her neck. I undid that, and the loops that framed her face. Thick as it was, I didn't try to comb it, but pinned it up in a twist on top of her head—kind of a knot, held with a handful of pins, and also kind of a swirl. Mostly a spray of dark, shiny waves, escaping the pins like a fountain. I stuck a few more pins into the center, fancy silver ones studded in gems, and added a butterfly barrette. She really had way too much hair for this, but I thought messy looked good on her. At any rate, it made a statement.

When I decided I was done – that is, when I realized there was nothing else I _could_ do – I took a step back, and handed Katara the mirror. Her eyes went wide. "Wow," she remarked, sort of dry, sort of numb. After a long moment spent staring at her reflection, assessing the damage I'd done. "And you said you didn't want to play beauty parlor."

"What do you mean? I still don't."

"Oh, I beg to differ." She wrinkled her nose and shut one eye, inspecting the turquoise half-moon painted there. "You're…quite the artist, aren't you?"

"If you say so." Fishing a handkerchief from the bag, she began to dab at the scarlet lipstick, wiping the last coat from her mouth. "Hey!" I said indignantly. "You can't just take it off!"

She cocked her head at me, as if daring me to stop her. Decisively, she pulled a pin from her hair. "Don't worry," she said, plucking more pins, shaking her hair loose down her back. "When I'm finished, you can take it all off, too."

"Excuse me?"

She fixed knowing eyes on mine. "You're not _really_ going to tell me no, are you? After…" Her voice trailed off and she gestured with a pin, one with dangling beads that caught the light. As though it were a wand, or a conductor's baton, she twirled its tip in a circle around her face. "This?"

Again, I sighed. She'd _said_ there'd be no obligation, but—she was right. It wasn't fair. I'd had my fun with her; the least I could do was take what I gave out. "Whatever." Just because I'd feel bad not doing it didn't mean I had to like it. I plunked myself down on a chair, being sure not to spare the scowl. "Just make it quick."

With a smile – and a few more amendments to her makeup, before she set the mirror down – she turned to her collection. Her first choice didn't take long. To my somewhat vague surprise, she bypassed the powders, and selected a tube of pink lipstick. "What, no rouge?"

"I don't think you need it. You have the most gorgeous cheekbones, you know." Actually, I hadn't. "Open your mouth."

I did and she applied the lipstick, very carefully. It slid on smooth, like silk, and I was surprised again to find that it felt nice; I didn't think about it much, but my lips were always dry. While I considered that, Katara picked up a black pencil – the one with the finest point. "Okay, now look up," she directed me. "Try not to blink." She leaned in and lined first one eye, then the other, her touch so light I could barely feel it. "Nice." When she pulled back, her gaze lingered on me a moment, a little longer than before. She blinked, and caught her breath. I don't know why it didn't bother me then.

At the time, what bothered me more was how quick she was, flitting from tube to pen to comb. I'd spent ages dolling her up. But she worked with a purpose – _why didn't it bother me then? – _and soon she was behind me, combing my hair. Combing it back, over my head, to pull it up in a knot; she let a few locks fall forward, along my allegedly gorgeous cheekbones, but the rest was rolled up tight. With a red ribbon, she tied it in place. Then she chose a pin for me, one I hadn't noticed before—I thought maybe she'd kept it in the bag. This pin was gold, flashing like a blade, one end long and sharp and the other sliced into spikes. The longer I looked at it, the more it resembled a flame. And the longer I looked the more it seemed familiar, like I'd seen it somewhere before, and the longer I think about it the more I hate myself for being so dense.

But it didn't bother me then. For whatever reason, it didn't bother me then, when she slid the pin in under the ribbon; its weight was familiar, too, but I brushed that off. She swallowed, almost too soft to hear. Then she picked up that enameled mirror, lying face-down on the table, and gave it to me. I don't know why I took it.

And I can't say exactly how I felt, when it happened. When I finally understood. I can't really remember, and I don't want to – who wants to look back on the world caving in? All I know for sure is what I did, and what I said. I wish I could, but I'll never forget what I said. The first words out of my mouth, when I looked into the mirror, and met those yellow eyes I knew so well—the only thing that, after what seemed a year of silence, I could manage to say.

"You said she was someone I knew."

I remember my voice broke. Hers didn't. "She is."

You'd think I'd drop the mirror then. You'd think I'd let it go and it would shatter, never mind the carpet floor—I guess it would've been more dramatic, that way, but I held on. Clutched the handle like an anchor, my last tether to the earth. I closed my eyes, too sick to look at the glass – to stand the sight of the girl, the princess, _myself_ – but I didn't let the mirror go. "Get out."

The words cut my lips. I might as well have flung a knife at her, sharp as they were. "Azula, please—"

"_I said get out_!"

It happened without my willing it. When I screamed that last, a plume of flame burst from my mouth, brilliant blue; it lit up the room and made the sound all the more savage, less a scream than a roar, less a roar than a roll of thunder. Suddenly, I was shaking with rage. Suddenly I felt the fire inside me, hungry for escape, and I would've torched the world just to stop feeling—would have burned everything, _everything_, just so there'd be nothing left to betray me. If it hadn't been for the mirror – still in my white-knuckled grip – I might have begun with her.

But I didn't. Whatever else I did, on that day and the days following, I didn't do that. And I didn't fall apart until she left.


	22. Azula and the Pin

**22. Azula and the Pin**

_I know what I have to do._

_I've been too long here, curled up in this chair, hair hanging over my shoulders. Fingering my golden pin. For hours now I've turned it over and over, watching its spikes catch the light; I saw that light fade as the sun fell, by silent leaden degrees, and now I see the pin reflect the moon. It took me that long to decide. But here, in the black pit of night, I know what I have to do. _

_A shaft of moonlight cleaves the room in two. On one side, I sit in my chair, slowly spinning the pin. On the other, she stands and watches._

_"Don't be angry at her," she says. Very soft._

_I don't even turn around. "She lied to me."_

_"You lied to yourself."_

_"_She lied to me!" _My voice cracks, but I still don't turn. I won't dignify her with a glance. "I can't stay here."_

_"Where will you go?"_

_"I don't know." I catch a glimpse of my eyes in the pin, glowing like cats' eyes in the night. "I can't stay here." _

_"You don't mean that." Disquiet tints her tone. "You can't just _leave_, Azula. They'll come after you." _

_I lift one shoulder, sort of shrug. It doesn't matter what she says. I know what I have to do, and she can't stop me. "I don't care." _

_"It won't end well."_

_For a moment, I hold my own gaze, yellow eyes mirrored in gold. I don't answer her. I don't move. In my head, I see the long dark road away from here. "What would you have me do?" I say quietly, closing my eyes. "Stay here forever? Act as if nothing's changed?" A sour smile slices my mouth. "Face her tomorrow? I can't." Slowly, I rise from my chair. Don't quite stand, staring at the door, but hang in space like an airship – resolute and lowering. "I'm leaving here. Tonight. And _you_—" My lip curls on the word. "You're going to go away. You're going to leave me alone, and never come back."_

_"Go away?" She actually sounds hurt. I hear her come closer, as if to touch me, and brace. "How could I? I'm your mother, Azula. I love you."_

_"No." It comes out hard, harder than any word I've ever spoken. "That's a lie. I don't know where my mother is, but you're not her; you never have been, and you never will be. You're not even real." Again, I shut my eyes, and steel my shoulders. Refuse to let the words stick in my throat. "You're in my mind. You've always been in my mind. When I open my eyes, you're going to be gone, forever—and I'm going to leave this place." _

_I breathe in deep. Then, I brandish the pin, and jam its long end into the lock. As if it were a dagger, and the bolt a pulsing heart – as if that heart were my mother's, or Katara's, or maybe even my own – I drive it in as hard as I can. I know it's sharp enough to gore these gears. If it can catch a stone face, halfway through a deadly drop, it can pick a rusty lock on a wooden door._

_Sure enough, the door gives way. It only takes a second. I don't look back. _


	23. Azula on the Beach

Rioshix: Re-read the ending of Chapter 21.

Star: Not this time around, but more characters will show up in the sequel. Which you probably won't want to read, since it'll be Azutara. ^_^; Sorry.

EVERYONE: The next chapter will be the last chapter. Just so you know. ;)

**23. Azula on the Beach**

In hindsight it wasn't a smart thing, what I did. Taking off in the middle of the night, barefoot and aimless, nothing to my name but that pin and the clothes on my back. I suppose I can't be clever all the time.

And it wasn't a good tactical move, either, doing what I did to that guard. Or stealing his mount. I was already racking up points against me, and even then I knew that wouldn't help—but what else could I have done? Gone on foot? I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I couldn't get there on my own. So I liberated a mongoose-lizard, from the first unlucky guard I encountered; no doubt used to patrolling the grounds, it was nevertheless easily swayed with a fire whip, and on its back I vanished into the hills.

I can't say how long or how far we traveled. I barely even noticed the sun. At some point it rose, but that made no difference to me; all that mattered was keeping that beast moving, as fast as it could go. Together we sailed through brush and meadowgrass, cliff-ringed valleys, the crops of forest that pocked the land like a rash. After awhile, it all looked the same. I couldn't tell one damp, dark wood from another, as we darted through them in a chain – one mud-slick path was as good as the last, and the next, and the branches broke the same with each crash through them, and clawed at the same snags in my clothes. Every riverbed wound through the land in the same way, strewn with the same dry-season dust. By noon, even volcanoes were melting into the horizon, no more than shadows against the sky.

I should've been tired, I guess. Maybe I was. It'd been days since I'd slept last, but I couldn't afford to feel it – after all, to stop would be to surrender, to hoist a white flag and wait to be found. To be dragged back to the asylum in chains. I wasn't ready to give up, and so I rode on; I shut out my muscles' groan, and I shut out my mind's fog, and whenever the lizard slowed I lashed it. Again and again. On and on. Until, as the sun waned, we reached the ocean's edge.

I climbed down and surveyed the sea, an endless blue plane. I should've known it was over then. Really, it was futile from the start – where could I have gone? – but that should've been the moment when I _knew_, knew for sure I couldn't win this time. I'd run my mount into the ground. It was exhausted and even if it weren't, it couldn't cross the sea; there was far too much water for that. Looking out, I couldn't even see the next island.

The lizard sank onto its belly in the sand. I sat down beside it and sighed. "Well." When I tossed it a glance, it sort of sighed too, letting out a long breath through its nose. "I guess you're not going to take me any further."

For awhile, I sat there on the beach, resting against the lizard's heaving side. Now and then I stroked the scales down its back, and now and then it sniffed at the sand; other than that, nothing moved. Nothing but the sea, with tides lapping at the shore. Before long the sun fell, in a blaze of red-gold that died too soon, and the moon rose full and silver in the sky. I watched it ripple on the surf, in a loose shimmering pillar, flashing on the caps of waves as they broke. I dipped my toes in a tidepool. While I could, I felt the wind on my face. I was tired but I didn't sleep, couldn't sleep, and I guess I knew she was coming—must've known all along, in the back of my mind. Must've felt it in my gut. And honestly, it was almost a relief, hearing the bison groan – feeling the earth shudder beneath me, when it landed on the beach. Knowing that the waiting, at least, was over.

I stood up and cast a stone into the sea, a slick shiny thing from the tidepool. So small it could get lost in my palm. "You lied to me."

For the first time in months, I counted the steps she took, until she stopped a good ways behind me. "No," she replied, a little bit hoarse, a little bit sad. A little bit angry, too. "I never lied."

"You didn't tell me the truth."

"How could I?" Bitterness crept into her voice. "You'd never have believed me. You wouldn't even hear your own _name_, much less where you came from, much less who you were. I could only try so hard to tell you what you didn't want to hear."

I stiffened. The fact that it made sense, if I thought about it, made me feel no less betrayed. "I _trusted _you," I spat, as if the word were foul. "I can't believe—I was fool enough to trust you, all that time, and you lied to me. All that time, you were just—playing some _game,_ making a dog out of me, a tame dumb thing to amuse you when you got bored. Is that how you people do revenge? Was that what you wanted all along, to—to make a _child_ of me, to have me tailing you like a puppy all over that stupid asylum? So you could think to yourself _oh, how the mighty have fallen_? So you could go back to the palace at the end of the day, and laugh with everybody else about the things you got me to do? So you could add 'got the princess of the Fire Nation doing waterbending forms' to your list of—I don't know, accomplishments? Victories? Jokes to tell at parties?"

I went on longer than I'd meant to, wrath mounting with each word, and by the time I was done the tension was tangible. Her voice, when she spoke, was strung tight. "I've never heard anything more ridiculous in my life," she snapped. "If you really believe any of that, you _are_ a fool."

I snorted. "And what would _you_ have me believe?"

"I don't know, maybe what I've been saying this whole time? That I wanted to _help_ you?"

"Why would _you_ want to help _me_?" I couldn't stand it anymore. I jerked around and looked her in the eyes, the same summer-sky blue they'd always been. "After everything I did? We're _enemies_, in case you forgot. I hunted you for months. I took you captive, I—I nearly _killed _your _boyfriend_—Katara, I nearly killed _you_! Without a second thought! My friends don't want to help me, my own _family_ doesn't want to help me – so why would you?"

The words burned on my tongue. I tossed them at her like daggers, hoping to hit where it hurt – but she only softened, and swallowed them up. "Because you're more than that," she said. "I know you are. We sat together in the library, and you asked me if I missed my home, and I _knew_ you were more than that—you walked with me in the garden, and you stopped to touch all the flowers, and I knew it then, too. When you told me about your dreams, when you let me comb your hair, when you did my kata even though it wasn't perfect. When you told me you trusted me. When you read me your book. Everything you've said, everything you've done, all of this time—deny it if you want, but you're human, Azula. There's something in you worth saving."

I stared at her. For a moment I ached to believe it, that things could be so simple. "None of that matters now. The girl who did those things—she wasn't me." Again, I turned my back on her, looking out to sea. Watching the waves crash and evanesce, darkening the sand. "Don't you remember?" I said harshly. "I was _crazy_."

"You were never crazy," she answered. "Confused, maybe. Very stubborn. But not crazy."

I was so tired. I looked down at the water, washing over my feet, and a wish entered my mind to drift away – to float out to sea with the tides, and never come back. To let the current suck me under, down to the ocean floor. Down to the blackest black, the coldest cold, to a place where there was no wanting—and just as soon I despised myself, for being so weak. _Never give up. _I turned from the sea and headed down the beach, Katara and the sleeping lizard at my back. _Never give in. _

"Where are you going?"

"Nowhere." From the corner of my eye, I saw the moon gleam, reminding me how slim a chance I'd stand. "I'm just finding a place to sleep."

She sighed. "All right, well—you have two more days, okay? They gave me three to find you. If I bring you back in three days, we'll have a chance to bargain – but if not, they'll send out a search party. And when they find you—and they _will_ find you—you'll go back in chains."

The wind blew my hair over my face. I didn't stop to push it back. "I know."


	24. Azula Makes a Choice

So here we are at the end. Questions are answered, things are revealed, decisions are made. Things boil over and cool down. I very much enjoyed writing this story, and I very much hope you've enjoyed reading it; if you have, I invite you to check out its sequel, tentatively titled _Satellite_, coming soon to a computer screen near you. Fair warning (or incentive, depending on how you see it) for anyone who hasn't read previous ANs: it'll be Azutara. As in, romantic Azutara. If you're amenable to that, then by all means, read on. But if you're happy with this ending, and you'd rather preserve the image at the end of this chapter – the image of Azula and Katara as friends, and nothing else – then unfortunately, this is where we shall part ways.

**24. Azula Makes a Choice**

I woke with the sun. There by the sea, there wasn't much cover from it; I'd slept behind an outcropping of rock, but morning bathed the sand all around it, and my blanket of shadow quickly thinned. Peering out at the beach, I took stock of the scene: Katara sitting in the sand, heating something over a little fire. My lizard nestled beside her. Her bison asleep in the dunes. The ocean, calm and clear at low tide, glittering in the dawn. Everything seemed so bright.

My muscles complained, but I stood up, hungrier than I was sore. When Katara saw me, she smiled. "Breakfast?"

I nodded. Glancing down, I saw that she was brewing tea, in a little clay pot over the fire; producing two cups, she poured one for me and one for her. Then she opened a pot beside her, steaming on a straw mat, and with a spoon scooped some rice into two bowls. Obviously, she'd come prepared. Vaguely impressed, I took my breakfast, and she put out the fire, and together we found a place to sit – a broad, flat shelf of rock, just feet from the sea.

For awhile, it was quiet. Just us eating, and the ocean sighing, and the seagulls wheeling and crying overhead. "Listen," she said eventually, setting down her bowl. "I wanted to say I'm sorry, for—not telling you the truth. I don't know what else I could've done, but—but I know you feel betrayed, and that's not what I want. I want you to be able to trust me, Azula. I want you to know I won't let you down."

I stared down into my rice bowl, scraped clean and resting in my lap. "It's fine," I said hoarsely. "I'm fine. You didn't have a choice."

"Yes, well—even so, I want to make sure I'm honest with you. No more lies. And I need to—there's something you should know." I glanced at her. She gave the ghost of a smile. "When I first came to you, and—for awhile after, I really believed what I said. About healing, untangling the knots. I thought—well, I thought you _were_ crazy, and maybe that was something I could heal." With one finger, she traced slow circles around her bowl's rim, eyes fixed on it as she spoke. "But the more I saw you – the more time I spent with you, the more time we talked – the more I realized what I said last night. You weren't crazy. You didn't need me to fix you. You just needed someone to talk to.

"And I—I never meant to deceive you. I just thought it would be easier, if we went on with the sessions—I thought it might help, and it couldn't hurt, and you'd be more willing to accept it. I thought you'd rather see me as your doctor, than your…therapist." She pressed her lips together. "Because that's not even what it was, really. I just wanted to be your friend. I knew if you had someone to listen, someone who actually _cared_—I knew I could help you, just being there for you. I knew it and I was right, I know that now for sure – but I thought you ought to know the truth. The whole truth. For once and for all."

_I just wanted to be your friend. _The pain from the night before came back. Not the pain of betrayal, no; that was a darker pain, a knife-in-the-gut pain, a deep twisting pain that tasted of blood. This was more of an ache. It seeped through me slowly, drip-drip-dripping down, leaving me nauseous and numb. It was the something inside me that _wanted_ to believe her, so badly—coming up against the something that knew better. That said it was too blind a leap.

"Azula?" She touched my hand, crawling with pins and needles. "Are you okay?"

"_Okay_?" I snapped out of my trance and blinked at her, so absurd was the thought. "Am I _okay_? Katara, I—for the first time in my life, I have _no idea_ what to do. I have nowhere to _go_. I feel like a rat in a trap. How could I possibly be _okay_?"

"What do you mean, nowhere to go? You could go back to the palace—"

I snorted. "Over Zuko's dead body."

"Not necessarily. It's your home, too; you have just as much right to be there as he does." I raised an eyebrow. "You could go back," she pressed on, painfully sincere. "I'd vouch for you. You could go home again, if we play our cards right. And you could see your friends, and your mom—" I'd remember to widen my eyes at that later "—and you could _do_ something with your life. Something good. You could change the world, you know, for the better this time—or you could just sit around and make clover chains, whatever you want. There are a thousand and one things you could do, and I can personally guarantee you that every single one is _worlds _better than wasting your life in a straitjacket."

I didn't answer right away. Couldn't, I guess. Instead I turned my gaze towards the tides, the same gold as the sky. At dawn everything was gold, the sun immense and brilliant; as it rose, the whole world opened to it. The waves spread their skirts. The sky embraced the light. The stars winked and disappeared, darted off like lightning bugs, and my blood warmed beneath my skin—sent a swell of gooseflesh down my back. It was good to feel strong again, even if it meant nothing. Even if I was still outmatched. Eyes drifting with the surf, I reached down and picked up my teacup, sitting cool on the shelf beside me. Cradled and warmed it in my hands.

The first sip should've been comforting. Instead, it just reminded me of home. "How do I know it's enough?"

The words came out soft, against the cup's rim. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, how do I know that's all I want? If I go back—how do I know it's even possible, to be anything but what I was? How do I know I'll be any good at it? How do I know I won't spend the rest of my life miserable, just longing for…what could've been?"

"You can't." She shrugged. "But that's okay. You're a big girl now, and your dad's not here to tell you what makes things right or wrong; no one's ever going to do that again. No one else knows what _you_ want, or what's going to make _you_ happy. No one else knows who you are. You have to know it for yourself."

I don't know why, but my eyes sort of glazed, in the steam rising from my teacup. Something fluttered in my chest. A tremor, maybe, or a cracking egg; whatever it was, it was the closest I'd come to crying in a long time. Since the day when everything fell apart. "I'm not sorry."

"What?"

"I'm not sorry," I said again, kind of halting, thicker than I would've liked. "For what I did. I'll never be."

I chanced a look at her, brow knit. Again, she shrugged. "No one's asking for that."

"Zuko would."

"Yeah, well, we're not talking about him, are we?" She eyed me knowingly, head tipped to one side. A flicker of tenderness crossed her face – a brief, sweet thing, quick as a hummingbird. So earnest I caught my breath. And not something that was new, either, or foreign; something that lived, all the time, under her skin. "My goal," she said, "was never to make you sorry. I don't want you to regret." She smiled. "I want you to be happy."

I helped her pack up camp. Together, we bound up her bedroll, stacked her pots; she called the bison and we loaded its saddle. Then she beckoned my lizard, and unsaddled it, and loosened its reins, all the while musing as to whether or not the bison would carry it. It would have to, if we were going to go back. But while she negotiated that – at once trying to calm her mount and lure mine onto it – I looked back out at the sea. Thought about that day in the library, what seemed like years ago now – that day when she'd said, _we'll go see the ocean one day. You and me. _And I sifted the sand through my toes, and thought about how she'd made good on that promise, in the end. How the world kept on turning, even now.

Then when I looked she was on the bison, and to help me up she reached out her hand. Like she had that first time I'd left the cell. There was still something daunting about it, her open palm. "Wait," I said suddenly, stepping back. "I have to tell you something."

"Yeah?"

I furrowed my brow. "I lied. A princess doesn't surrender with honor." _Never give up, _I'd told myself last night._ Never give in. _"She doesn't surrender at all."

"I know. Going back isn't surrendering." A smile opened on her face, as ever sunshine-bright. "It's being strong enough to start over."


End file.
